UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
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A  GLANCE 


T 

I 


CURRENT  HISTORY 


BY 


JOHN    CUSSONS, 

Past-Grand  Commander  of  the  Confederate  Veterans  of  Virginia; 
Ex-Chairman  of  History  Committee,  &c. 


GLEN  ALLEN,  VA. 

CUSSONS,  MAY  &  COMPANY,  INC. 

1899. 


Copyright,  1899, 
By  JOHN  CI/SSONS. 

All  rights  reserved. 


gr 

Clt    £ 

Q 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF 

MY  COMRADES 
WHO  FELL   IN   DEFENCE 

OF  THEIR 
INHERITED  LIBERTIES 

THESE  PAGES  ARE 
AFFECTIONATELY  INSCRIBED. 


PUBLISHERS'  NOTE. 

These  pages  give  the  candid  utterances  of  a  Confed- 
erate soldier  who  strenously  opposed  disunion ;  not  as 
doubting  the  rightfulness  of  secession,  but  as  gravely 
questioning  its  expediency. 

During  the  period  of  agitation  which  preceded  the 
war  he  believed  that  the  revolutionary  spirit  which 
then  infected  the  North  was  but  a  passing  phase  of 
fanaticism,  and  that  that  fanaticism  was  destined  to 
perish  under  the  rebuke  of  all  good  citizens  who,  he 
believed,  would  surely  unite  in  upholding  the  Constitu- 
tion and  the  laws.  But  when  Lincoln's  call  for  an 
army  of  invasion  found  so  swift  response  among  the 
multitude,  it  became  evident  that  Northern  conservatism 
had  been  over-estimated,  and  that  the  advocates  of 
secession  had  really  read  the  portents  aright. 

The  author  has  always  held  that  the  full  measure 
of  America's  greatness  could  be  achieved  only  beneath 
a  single  flag,  but  he  is  equally  firm  in  the  conviction 
that  a  true  spirit  of  national  unity  will  never  be 


448131 


6  PUBLISHERS'  NOTE. 

attained  by  a  distortion  of  historic  truths.  He  believe? 
that  the  highest  and  noblest  aspirations  of  a  people 
will  take  their  impress  from  that  which  is  worthiest  in 
their  traditions,  and  that  if  they  are  so  unfortunate  as 
to  feel  no  just  pride  in  their  past  they  may  well  despair 
of  finding  any  rational  hope  for  their  future.  In  short, 
he  insists  that  there  can  be  no  evil  so  deep  and  abid- 
ing as  that  which  must  befall  a  people  who  have  been 
taught  to  hold  the  memory  of  their  ancestors  in  derision 
and  contempt.  Believing  thus,  his  creed  is:  "Absolute 
fairness  in  the  historic  treatment  of  the  past,  and  then 
unity  of  effort  for  the  upbuilding  of  a  nation  such  as 
the  world  has  not  seen." 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE. 

I.     A  Glance  at  Current  History,     -         -  11 

II.     On  History  as  Taught  in  Our  Schools,         -  77 

III.  On  "Teachable"  History,  -                           -  89 

IV.  On  the  Outworn  Theory  of  Government  by 

Consent,                                                       -  118 

V.     On  Granting  Forgiveness  Before  it  is  Asked,  131 

VI.     On  the  "  Treachery"  of  the  American  Indian,  141 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 


On  the  general  merits,  or  rather  demerits, 
of  THE  SOUTH  it  is  quite  evident  that  the 
outside  world  has  made  up  its  mind. 

The  "accepted  fable"  or  "distillation  of 
rumors"  which  we  call  history,  has  fully 
crystallized,  and  there  seems  but  little  ground 
for  supposing,  during  the  present  generation, 
that  there  will  be  any  revision  of  the  judg- 
ment already  pronounced. 

For  two-and-thirty  years  our  Northern 
friends  have  deprecated  any  allusion  on  our 
part  to  the  causes  or  character  of  the  war, 
assuring  us  that  every  impulse  of  manhood 


12      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

and  every  throb  of  patriotism  demanded 
that  we  should  bury  the  past,  with  all  its 
illusive  hopes  and  unavailing  griefs,  and 
bend  our  undivided  energies  to  the  upbuild- 
ing of  a  common  country.  And  that  is  pre- 
cisely the  thing  which  we  have  been  doing. 

Meantime,  during  those  same  two  and 
thirty  years,  those  Northern  friends  of  ours 
have  been  diligent  in  a  systematic  distortion 
of  the  leading  facts  of  American  history — 
inventing,  suppressing,  perverting,  without 
scruple  or  shame — until  our  Southland 
stands  to-day  pilloried  to  the  scorn  of  all 
the  world  and  bearing  on  her  front  the 
brand  of  every  infamy. 

This  has  been  accomplished  not  alone 
nor  chiefly  by  historic  narrative  or  formal 
record,  but  rather  by  the  persistent  use,  at 
all  times  and  on  all  occasions,  of  every 
form  and  mode  of  unfriendly  expression — 
in  pulpit  and  on  platform,  at  lyceum  and 
on  the  hustings,  by  picture  and  story,  by 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      13 

essay  and  song,  by  sedate  disquisition  and 
airy  romance,  and  in  a  general  way  by  the 
unwearied  false  coloring  of  all  past  and 
current  events. 

Step  by  step  the  malignant  work  has 
gone  on.  Each  point  yielded  by  Confed- 
erate silence  has  been  swiftly  seized  as  a 
new  vantage  ground  for  Federal  aggression. 
The  forbearance  of  the  South  has  been 
misconstrued.  In  her  solicitude  for  the 
honor  of  the  American  name,  she  has  re- 
frained from  either  vindicating  herself  or 
characterizing  the  conduct  of  her  con- 
querors. Like  the  true  mother  at  the  judg- 
ment seat  of  the  Great  King  she  has  accepted 
injustice  rather  than  bring  under  condem- 
nation the  child  of  her  own  being.*  And 
she  has  her  reward. 

For  thus  it  has  come  to  pass  that  in  the 
popular  mind  her  very  name  has  been  made 


*The  domain  of  Virginia  originally    extended    from    Carolina  to 
Canada,  and  from  the  Atlantic  ocean  to  the  Pacific. 


14      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

an  embodiment  of  folly,  a  symbol  of  mean- 
ness, a  proverb  of  utter  and  incurable  in- 
efficiency. The  economist  with  a  principle 
to  illustrate,  the  moralist  full  of  his  Neme- 
sian  philosophy,  the  dramatist  in  quest  of 
poetic  justice — in  short  every  craftsman  of 
tongue  or  pen  with  a  moral  to  point  or  a 
tale  to  adorn  turns  instinctively  to  this 
mythical,  this  fiction-created  South,  and 
finds  the  thing  he  seeks. 

The  world  has  decided  against  us,  and 
there  remains  to  us  now  but  a  single  hope — 
the  hope  of  winning  and  holding  something 
better  than  a  dishonored  place  in  the  hearts 
of  our  own  children.  And  even  this  hope, 
modest  yet  none  the  less  precious,  is  fading 
away  as  the  days  go  by.  A  wise  and  philo- 
sophical historian  has  justly  said  that  "a 
people  which  takes  no  pride  in  the  noble 
achievements  of  a  remote  ancestry  will  never 
achieve  anything  worthy  to  be  remembered 
bv  remote  descendants."  Truer  words  were 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      15 

never  spoken.  And  yet  our  grandchildren, 
trained  in  the  public  schools,  often  mingle 
with  their  affection  an  indefinable  pity,  a 
pathetic  sorrow — solacing  us  with  their 
caresses  while  vainly  striving  to  forget  "our 
crimes."  A  bright  little  girl  climbs  into 
the  old  veteran's  lap,  and  hugging  him  hard 
and  kissing  his  gray  hairs,  exclaims :  "  I 
don't  care,  grandpa,  if  you  were  an  old 
rebel!  I  love  you!  I  love  3^011!" 

But  there  is  to  be  an  end  of  this.  The 
friends  of  the  Grand  Army  of  the  Republic 
have  spoken.  And  ever  since  the  war  ended, 
that  army  has  been  a  potential  force.  Noth- 
ing more  is  to  be  said  in  palliation  of  the 
rebels  or  the  rebellion — no  word  of  com- 
fort, no  plea  of  sympathy.  Confederates  are 
always  to  be  described  as  "insurrectionists" 
who  sought  to  destroy  the  Government. 
"Treason  is  to  be  made  odious."  The  story 
of  the  war  is  to  be  told  from  the  victor's 
standpoint  alone.  The  existing  histories  are 


16      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

to  be  expurgated.  Every  tribute  to  South- 
ern heroism  is  to  be  blotted  out,  and  the 
sum  total  of  martial  glory  is  to  be  trans- 
ferred to  the  Grand  Army  of  the  Republic. 
This  plan  has  doubtless  many  advantages. 
It  seems  to  settle  hard  questions  so  easily. 
Military  fame  is  illusive,  and  if  it  comes 
not  by  gage  of  battle,  there  is  really  noth- 
ing more  natural  than  to  invoke  it  by  other 
means.  And  our  Northern  friends  have 
chosen  wisely.  If  the  three  tailors  of  Tooley 
street  could  achieve  undying  renown  by 
putting  forth  a  mere  preamble,  what  may 
not  the  friends  of  the  Grand  Army  accom- 
plish by  writing  down  a  solid  column  of 
resolutions?  They  have  labored  long  and 
arduously,  but  have  at  last  hit  the  mark. 
We  admire  their  perseverance,  their  re- 
sourcefulness, but  most  of  all  we  felicitate 
them  on  their  success  in  giving  a  new 
meaning  to  the  old  aphorism  that  "the  pen 
is  mightier  than  the  sword." 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      17 

The  United  States  History  which  to  day 
enjoys  the  widest  circulation  and  the  highest 
fame  is  the  recent  work  of  GOLDWIN  SMITH, 
Doctor  of  Canon  Law  and  Professor  of 
the  Humanities,  Toronto,  Canada. 

The  learned  author  has  gathered  his  in- 
spiration, and  what  he  calls  his  facts,  from 
many  sources.  He  enumerates  by  title  no 
less  than  twenty-two  authorities,  and  adds 
that  a  complete  list  would  be  out  of  propor- 
tion to  the  size  of  the  book  itself.  And 
yet  there  is  absolutely  nothing  to  indicate 
that  he  has  troubled  himself  with  more 
than  one  side  of  his  subject.  He  makes  no 
allusion  of  any  kind  to  any  writer  who  has 
extended  his  investigations  in  the  faintest 
degree  beyond  the  beaten  paths  of  North- 
ern historical  orthodoxy.  There  is  not  a 
fragment  of  reference  to  Sage's  colossal 
work,  or  the  scholarly  monograph  of  Curry, 
or  the  vivid  picturings  of  Maury,  or  the  com- 
prehensive exposition  of  Stephens,  or  the 


18      A  GLANCE  AT  CURBENT  HISTORY. 

philosophical  review  of  Ropes,  or  indeed 
any  citation  whatever  which  can  inspire  a 
reasonable  hope  of  the  slightest  tendency 
towards  impartial  treatment. 

Mr.  Goldwin  Smith,  however,  is  something 
more  than  a  mere  Doctor  of  Canon  Law 
and  Professor  of  the  Humanities.  He  takes 
high  rank  among  the  masters  of  political 
economy,  and  surely  not  without  abundant 
reason,  for  the  skill  with  which  he  has 
adapted  his  wares  to  his  market  is  beyond 
all  praise. 

His  book  is  published  both  at  New  York 
and  London,  and  is  intended,  he  informs 
us,  "for  English  rather  than  American 
readers;"  nevertheless,  it  has  become  amaz- 
ingly popular  with  our  brethren  throughout 
the  North. 

The  general  plan  of  his  work  is  an  un- 
sparing villification  of  the  South.  This  wins 
for  him  Northern  plaudits.  Amid  the  glee- 
ful tumult  he  weaves  in  his  sneers  and 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      19 

gibes  on  America  at  large,  and  thus  opens 
a  second  market  for  his  books  among  his 
own  class  of  delighted  Britishers. 

South  Carolina,  he  says,  got  her  start  by 
combining  "buccaneering  with  slave  own- 
ing," and  utilized  her  ports  by  making  them 
•a  shelter  for  pirates  and  corsairs,  "  such  as 
-Captain  Kidd  and  Blackboard." 

Georgia  he  deals  with  more  leniently. 
Her  people  were  not  distinctly  criminal, 
but  just  languidly  and  lazily  vicious — shift- 
less, drunken  and  beggarly.  She  became 
^the  refuge  of  the  pauper  and  the  bank- 
rupt." Her  first  settlers  were  "good-for- 
nothings  who  had  failed  in  trade" — a  "shift- 
less and  lazy  set,"  who  "called  for  rum;" 
but  later  on  "better  elements  came  in, 
Highlanders,  Moravians,  and  some  of  the 
persecuted  Protestants  of  Salzburg." 

But  Virginia  seems  to  be  his  especial 
aversion.  From  her  very  beginning  it  has 
been  her  misfortune  to  awaken  within  him 


20      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

the  most  distressing  emotions.  He  says 
she  was  not  started  right;  that  her  first 
settlers  were  an  unpromising  lot — lackey s, 
beggars,  broken-down  gentlemen,  tapsters 
out  of  a  job.  And  things  went  from  bad 
to  worse.  "To  the  crew  of  vagabonds  were 
afterwards  added  jail-birds."  *  *  "Con- 
victs were  offered  their  choice  between  the 
gallows  and  Virginia,"  and  some  were  wise 
enough  to  choose  the  gallows.  They  were 
not  nice.  Their  aims  were  low,  their  mo- 
tives sordid,  "their  very  place  of  settlement 
has  long  been  a  desolation,  and  only  frag- 
ments of  ruin  mark  its  site." 

Such  is  the  forbidding  background  of  Mr. 
Goldwin  Smith's  historical  picture  when  he 
begins  to  light  it  up  with  the  luminous 
glories  of  the  Plymouth  settlement.  The 
Pilgrims,  he  assures  us,  were  an  altogether 
different  kind  of  people.  There  was  noth- 
ing sordid  about  them,  nothing  grovelling, 
nothing  base.  Their  pure  hearts  were  too 


A  GLANCE  AT  CUBBENT  HISTORY.      21 

full  of  simple  faith  and  holy  zeal  to  afford 
room  for  corrupting  influences  or  worldly 
desires.  "Some  sustaining  motive  higher 
than  gain  was  necessary  to  give  them  vic- 
tory in  their  death  struggle  with  nature, 
to  enable  them  to  make  a  new  home  for 
themselves  in  the  wilderness,  and  to  found 
a  nation." 

It  was  not  only  during  the  early  period 
of  colonization  that  the  New  Englanders 
were  superior  to  the  Virginians.  The  dis- 
tinction seems  to  have  widened  as  time 
went  on.  "Though  no  longer  gold  seekers, 
the  men  of  Virginia  were  not  such  colonists 
as  the  Puritans.  Thej^  were  more  akin  in 
character  to  the  Spaniard  on  the  south  of 
them,  who  made  the  Indian  work  for  him, 
than  to  the  New  Englander,  who  worked 
for  himself."  *  *  "To  work  for  them 
they  had  from  the  first  a  number  of  in- 
dentured servants,  or  bondsmen,  jail-birds, 
many  of  them;  some  kidnapped  by  press 


22      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

gangs  in  the  streets  of  London,  all  of  de- 
praved character."  "  Afterwards  came- 
in  ever-increasing  volume  African  slavery, 
the  destined  bane  of  Virginia  and  her  ulti- 
mate ruin.  Thus  were  formed  the  three 
main  orders  of  Virginia  society:  the  planter 
oligarchy,  the  'mean  white  trash/  and  the 
negro  slaves."  And  so  for  two  hundred 
years  she  plodded  on,  unredeemed,  her  "poor 
whites"  being  hopelessly  given  over  to  "a 
barbarous  and  debased  existence." 

As  were  the  people  so  were  their  leaders. 
"A  chief  fomenter  of  the  quarrel"  [with 
England]  "was  Patrick  Henry,  a  man  who 
had  tried  many  ways  of  earning  a  liveli- 
hood, and  had  failed  in  all."  *  *  *  "A 
brankrupt  at  twenty-three,  he  lounged  in 
thriftless  idleness,  till  he  found  that  tho  he 
could  not  live  by  industry  he  could  live  by 
his  eloquent  tongue." 

This  is  the  Goldwin  Smith  idea  incarnate. 
It  is  the  Yankee  idea,  the  Puritan  idea. 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      23 

The  logical  New  England  brain  would 
formulate  and  demonstrate  the  proposition 
thus: 

1.  Patrick  Henry,  furnished  with  a  good 
stock  of  groceries,  failed  at  twenty-three. 

2.  A  Puritan,  even  of   the  tenth    magni- 
tude, under   like   circumstances,   would   not 
fail  at  twenty- three. 

Ergo:  A  tenth-rate  Puritan  is  the  supe- 
rior of  Patrick  Henry. 

Such  are  the  limitations  of  the  New  Eng- 
land mind.  Under  the  Jaw  of  its  very 
being  it  is  fettered  by  its  single  standard 
of  worth,  and  is  therefore  qualified  to  pass 
judgment  only  on  those  subjects  which  by 
it  are  measurable  or  deemed  worthy  of 
measurement.  Its  supreme  test  of  merit  is 
accumulation;  the  capacity  to  amass. 

As  a  student  of  natural  history  our 
author  has  doubtless  been  taught  that  the 
eagle  is  without  a  rival  in  range  of  vision 
or  strength  of  wing.  And  yet  he  should 


24      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

know  that  the  busy  magpie  in  half  an  hour 
will  spy  out  and  stow  away  more  bits  of 
glass  and  shining  beads  and  glittering 
trumpery  of  every  sort  than  the  Bird  of 
Jove  will  be  likely  to  get  together  in  a 
score  of  years.  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  does 
not  seem  to  make  proper  allowance  for 
differences  in  instinct. 

A  generous  foe,  a  member  of  the  aristo- 
cratic order  which  Henry  so  fiercely  as- 
sailed, sees  in  the  young  Virginian  something 
other  than  a  "shiftless  idler"  and  "loung- 
ing bankrupt."  The  poet-peer  felicitously 
presents  him  to  all  nations  and  to  all  ages 
as  "the  forest-born  Demosthenes" — the 
standard-bearer  of  a  brave  people,  outraged 
by  unendurable  wrongs,  yet  resolute  to  trans- 
mit to  their  posterity  the  liberties  which 
were  their  birthright. 

With  that  prescience  which  is  the  heaven- 
bestowed  gift  of  genius  the  young  patriot 
clearly  discerned  the  signs  of  the  times.  He 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      25 

foresaw  the  real  nature  of  that  tempest 
which  was  fast  gathering  throughout  the 
civilized  globe.  He  knew  that  tho  the 
world  for  two  centuries  had  been  awakening 
from  its  lethargy  of  a  thousand  years,  yet 
the  time  was  only  then  ripening  for  man- 
kind's deliverance.  Instead  of  minding  his 
shop,  as  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  would  have 
done;  instead  of  consecrating  himself  heart 
and  soul  to  movements  in  the  tallow  trade 
or  fluctuations  in  the  calico  market,  he  gave 
his  brilliant  intellect  free  range  through  the 
whole  cycle  of  human  knowledge,  and 
summed  up  the  situation  of  the  hour  with 
a  precision  and  comprehensiveness  which  is 
still  the  marvel  of  statists  and  historians 
and  political  philosophers. 

He  saw  the  forces  of  tyranny  marshalling 
themselves  on  every  hand  against  the  spirit 
of  liberty,  and  he  saw  that  the  spirit  of 
liberty  was  everywhere  the  spirit  of  the  age. 
He  foretold  the  nature  of  the  coming  strug- 


26      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

gle,  with  its  burden  of  grief  for  every  home 
in  Western  Europe.  He  heard  the  tread  of 
mighty  armies  and  the  sorrowing  cry  of 
oppressed  multitudes ;  a  cry  which  was  soon 
to  change  its  accent  and  precipitate  that 
frightful  conflict  which  shook  the  earth. 
The  hour  was  approaching  when  monarch s 
and  priests  and  conquerors  must  unite  to 
try  conclusions  in  a  death  grapple  with  the 
awakened  peoples — an  hour  when  the  new 
world  might  sever  the  ligatures  which 
bound  it  to  the  old — an  hour  when  America 
by  one  bold  stroke  might  fling  off  the 
ancient  traditions  which  else  would  forever 
entrammel  her  with  the  abuses  and  super- 
stitions of  a  despotic  and  benighted  past. 

It  was  for  the  work,  of  that  hour  that 
Patrick  Henry  was  born. 

The  informed  historian  discerns  in  him, 
not  the  "  storm  petrel  of  revolution,"  but  the 
defender  of  inherited  liberties.  He  came  at 
a  moment  when  free  institutions  were  tremb- 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      27 

ling  in  the  balance.  The  old  theory  of  kingly 
right  to  govern  wrong  was  being  again  as- 
serted. The  illimitable  and  unchecked  right 
to  tax  was  declared  in  the  very  terms  which 
had  demanded  benevolences  and  ship-money. 
Lord  North  and  the  Earl  of  Bute  and  George 
the  Third  had  formed  a  triune  despotism 
which  bore  every  mark  of  the  despotism  of 
Strafford  and  Laud  and  Charles  the  First. 
And  it  was  the  lot  of  Patrick  Henry  at 
that  crucial  moment  to  lead  the  forlorn 
hope  of  constitutional  liberty  just  as  John 
Hampden  had  led  it,  under  the  same  con- 
ditions, a  hundred  years  before. 

It  is  nothing  to  the  purpose  that  the 
colonies  won  their  independence,  their  State- 
hood, a  few  years  before  the  coming  of  the 
grand  catastrophe.  Their  action  was  sim- 
ply the  first  episode  of  that  mighty  drama. 
The  prize  battled  for  was  the  boon  of  civil 
liberty;  the  people  interested  were  the  civi- 
lized nations;  and  it  was  needful  that  the 


28      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

first  blow  should  come  from  the  Western 
hemisphere.  And  it  is  the  glory  of  Henry 
that  his  genius  discerned  the  end  from  the 
beginning — that  he  saw  in  the  approaching 
downfall  of  crown  and  scepter  and  mitre, 
and  all  the  infinite  paraphernalia  of  old 
world  oppression,  mankind's  best  hope  for 
the  new  world's  deliverance.  And  so  amidst 
the  first  mutterings  of  the  storm  which  was 
to  culminate  in  universal  wreckage — amidst 
the  portents  which  prefigured  the  vision  of 
tottering  thrones  and  shattered  dynasties 
and  crumbling  empires,  he  upheld  the 
brave  faith  that  then  and  there  might  be 
laid,  broad  and  deep,  the  enduring  founda- 
tions of  the  temple  of  American  liberty. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  throughout  his  en- 
tire work  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  never  calls 
the  name  of  a  Virginian  without  bestowing 
upon  him  the  tribute  of  his  scorn. 

If  sometimes  he  seems  to  praise  Wash- 
ington it  is  only  that  he  may  be  the  better 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      29 

able  to  mark,  by  force  of  contrast,  the 
worthlessnesB  of  his  followers  and  the  bad- 
ness of  his  cause. 

"Without  him,"  says  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith, 
that  cause  "would  have  been  ten  times 
lost,"  and  "the  names  of  those  who  had 
drawn  the  country  into  the  conflict  would 
have  gone  down  to  posterity  linked  with 
defeat  and  shame."  Still,  continues  the 
author,  "we  can  hardly  number  among 
great  captains  a  general  who  acted  on 
so  small  a  scale,"  one  who  "never  won  a 
battle,"  and  whose  final  success  after  all 
"was  due  not  to  native  valor  but  to  foreign 
aid."  The  chief  merit  which  he  grants  to 
Washington  was  "his  calmness  and  self- 
control  in  contending  with  the  folly  and 
dishonesty  of  Congress  and  the  fractious- 
ness  of  the  State  militia."  As  a  commen- 
tary on  the  times  he  quotes  a  casual  remark 
of  Governeur  Morris:  "Jay/  ejaculated 
Governeur  Morris  thirty  years  afterwards, 


30      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

'what  a  lot  of  d d  scoundrels  we  had  in 

that  Second  Congress!'  'Yes,'  said  Jay, 
'we  had/  and  he  knocked  the  ashes  from 
his  pipe."  In  a  nation  where  all  are  blind, 
a  one-eyed  man  will  be  king.  And  such  is 
substantially  the  distinction  which  Mr.  Gold- 
win  Smith  accords  to  George  Washington. 

James  Madison,  one  the  most  eminent 
and  blameless  statesmen  of  any  age  or  na- 
tion is  curtly  dismissed  as  "a  well-meaning 
man,  but  morally  weak." 

Henry  Clay,  orator,  patriot,  pacificator — 
passionately  beloved  by  his  friends  and 
honored  even  by  his  political  opponents — 
devoted  beyond  all  else  to  the  welfare  of 
his  country,  and  ever  ready  to  make  any 
sacrifice  at  the  shrine  of  an  unbroken 
Union — who  Curtius-like  flung  himself  time 
and  again  into  the  abysses  of  sectional  dis- 
cord, and  whose  whole  life  was  a  concord- 
ance of  the  placid  words  he  spoke  when  he 
met  his  political  defeat,  "it  is  better  to  be 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      31 

right  than  president;" — this  man,  able,  pure, 
magnanimous,  generous  in  his  ambitions, 
avowed  in  his  convictions;  steadfast  in  his 
aims,  true  to  his  friends,  charitable  to  his 
opponents,  flexible  in  expedients  yet  firm 
as  the  primal  rocks  where  principle  was  in- 
volved; this  man,  the  latchet  of  whose 
shoes  his  accuser  is  not  worthy  to  unloose, 
is  flippantly  denounced  as  a  mere  "  political 
acrobat,"  a  "dazzling  but  artful  politician 
who  owed  his  fall  to  a  false  step  in  the 
practice  of  his  own  art." 

John  Randolph,  he  tells  us,  had  "  natural 
ability"  but  lacked  "good  sense"  and  had 
"no  power  of  self-control."  *  *  *  "With 
the  arrogance  of  his  class  he  would  enter 
the  Senate  with  his  hunting  whip  in  his 
hand,  and  behave  as  if  he  were  in  his 
kennel." 

The  "behavior"  of  Virginians  seems  in- 
deed to  be  a  subject  of  ever-recurring 
solicitude  with  Mr.  Gold  win  Smith.  For 


32      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

he  is  exceeding  strong  on  questions  of 
deportment — a  weighty  judge  of  "leather 
and  prunello." 

"  Let  arts  and  commerce,  laws  and  learning  die, 
But,  give  us  back  our  old  nobility!" 

He  makes  the  customary  fling  at  "  plan- 
tation manners,"  but  is  mildly  surprised 
that  "  Franklin  and  Samuel  Adams "  should 
have  been  "  lacking  in  the  ordinary  traits  of 
gentlemen."  As  for  Patrick  Henry  nothing 
better  was  to  be  expected,  since  "the  char- 
acter of  an  English  gentleman"  is  not  to 
be  formed  "on  a  plantation  or  in  the  back- 
woods,"— an  opinion  by  the  way  which  is 
anything  but  English  if  we  exclude  such 
authorities  as  the  distinguished  author,  the 
'Arrys  and  'Arriotts  of  Bow  Bells,  and  the 
eminently  respectable  contingent  of  Ser- 
vants' Hall. 

The  only  American  whom  Mr.  Goldwin 
Smith  seems  to  hold  in  real  regard  is  Gen- 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      33 

eral  Benedict  Arnold.  "Arnold,"  he  says, 
"was  one  of  the  best  of  the  American  com- 
manders and  perhaps  the  most  daring  of 
them  all."  *  *  *  "He  was  slighted  and 
wronged  by  the  politicians,"  and  "seems 
to  have  despaired  of  the  cause."  As  a 
patriot  "he  shrank  from  the  idea  of  the 
French  alliance."  He  believed  "that  France 
had  designs  on  Canada."  Under  those  cir- 
cumstances he  resolved  to  enact  the  role 
of  General  Monk,  and  to  that  end  opened 
negotiations  with  the  British  Commander. 


In  his  treatment  of  incident  Mr.  Goldwin 
Smith  is  no  less  buoyant  and  free-handed 
than  in  his  judgment  of  character.  He  has 
no  prejudices;  no  bias.  All  kinds  of 
knowledge  are  equally  welcome;  all  sources 
of  information  equally  meritorious.  Any 
rumor  of  the  camp,  any  scrap  of  idle 
gossip,  any  stray  vagary  of  the  newspaper 


34      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

correspondent,  so  it  meets  his  needs,  is 
accounted  proper  pabulum  for  the  Muse  of 
History. 

Here  are  a  few  of  his  utterances,  taken 
almost  at  random: 

"Jefferson  Davis  when  captured"  was 
"  farcically  disguised  in  woman's  clothes." 

"The  slaveholders  escaped  military  ser- 
vice while  they  thrust  the  poor  under  fire." 

"Confederate  prisoners  were  well  fed,  and 
suffered  no  hardships."  "  If  many 

of  them  died  it  was  because  the  caged  eagle 
dies." 

"  Guards  pressed  men  in  the  streets "  of 
Southern  cities,  and  ''conscripts  were  seen 
going  to  Lee's  army  in  chains." 

The  Southern  clergy  were  "not  only 
ignorant  but  cringing  and  degraded." 

"  Jackson  was  nicknamed  '  Stonewall ' "  be- 
cause of  his  steadfastness  "on  a  field  of 
general  panic." 

Wilkes    Booth     was    "a    ranting   Virginia 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      35 

actor"  who  drew  his  inspiration  from  "the 
tyrannicide  motto  of  his  State." 

"  At  the  taking  of  Fort  Pillow  the  negroes 
were  nailed  to  logs  and  burned  alive." 

"Copperheads  were  so  called  from  a  rep- 
tile which  waits  on  the  rattlesnake,  the 
rattlesnake  being  emblematic  of  the  South." 

"The  Northern  press,  unlike  the  slave 
press  of  the  South,  never  misled  the  people 
by  publishing  false  news  of  military  suc- 
cesses." 

"The  Southern  lady  was  but  the  head  of 
a  harem."  She  "might  be  soft,  elegant,  and 
charming,  tho  there  was  an  element  in  her 
character  of  a  different  kind,  which  civil 
war  disclosed." 

Slanders  and  perversions  such  as  these 
seem  unworthy  of  serious  refutation.  They 
arouse  loathing  rather  than  resentment.  And 
so  amid  our  unutterable  and  unuttered  con- 
tempt they  generally  escape  rebuke.  Yet 
the  world  believes  them.  It  is  nothing  that 


36      A  GLANCE  AT  CUREENT  HISTORY. 

many  of  these  fables  are  foolish  and  in- 
credible in  themselves.  It  is  nothing  that 
they  are  false  to  nature,  false  to  fact,  false 
to  the  canons  of  fiction.  It  is  nothing  that 
they  confute  each  other.  It  is  nothing  that 
they  would  be  mutually  destructive  if  they 
should  meet,  for  they  are  scattered  through- 
out many  pages  and  are  digested  singly. 

Frightful  stories  are  told  of  horrible  tor- 
ture inflicted  by  Southerners  on  their  hap- 
less prisoners.  And  charming  pastorals  are 
written  on  the  lovingkindness  of  the  North- 
ern people  as  manifested  by  their  beneficent 
treatment  of  the  captives  in  their  hands. 
And  yet  when  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  is  con- 
fronted by  the  official  prison  records  on 
each  side — when  it  is  shown  that  the  death 
rate  in  Northern  prisons  exceeded  the  death 
rate  in  Southern  prisons  by  nearly  eight  per 
cent. — the  versatile  author  has  his  ready 
reason:  "If  many  of  the  Southerners  died 
it  was  because  the  caged  eagle  dies." 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      37 

This  in  a  sense  is  true,  and  is  a  just  tho 
unconscious  tribute  to  the  soldiery  of  the 
South.  Many  of  them  did  die  as  the  caged 
eagle  dies;  they  did  beat  out  their  hearts 
against  the  prison  bars;  their  spirits  at  last 
did  sink;  their  eyes,  dauntless  in  battle,  did 
grow  dim.  And  so,  tho  they  were  still 
unsubdued,  their  pulses  ceased  at  last  to 
beat,  and  only  their  mortal  clay  remained 
to  those  who  could  destroy  their  bodies  but 
could  not  quell  their  souls. 

The  fidelity  of  the  Confederate  captive  is 
without  a  parallel  in  human  history.  At 
any  hour  of  any  day  freedom  was  his  on 
the  simple  condition  of  swearing  allegiance 
to  the  "Government  of  the  United  States." 

But  what  was  the  mood  of  this  Southern 
soldier — this  scion  of  a  race  of  freemen — 
this  bold  spirit  who  under  duress  "dies  as 
the  caged  eagle  dies;"  what  was  his  mood 
of  mind  while  he  was  being  dragged  "to 
Lee's  army  in  chains?"  Where  then  were 

446131. 


38      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

beak  and  claw  and  strength  of  wing?  And 
with  what  sort  of  thrusting  instrument  did 
the  "shirking  slaveowners"  "thrust  him 
under  fire?  And  how  many  chained  eagles 
could  one  thruster  "thrust  forward  at  a 
time?"  Or  rather,  perhaps,  how  many 
"shirking  slaveholders"  would  be  required 
to  "thrust  under  fire"  a  single  eagle,  chained 
or  unchained? 

And  is  not  the  South  entitled  to  some 
off-set  against  the  North  on  the  score  of 
this  special  cause  of  death?  Was  it  only  on 
one  side  that  the  vital  spark  was  quenched 
by  loss  of  liberty?  Did  no  imprisoned 
Northern  soldier  "die  as  the  caged  eagle 
dies?"  Would  each  and  all  have  been 
happy  and  contented  if  "well  fed"  and 
sheltered  from  "hardship?"  WTas  it  the 
Southern  soldier  alone  who  had  none  but 
moral  griefs,  while  the  Northern  soldier  had 
only  material  ones?  And  must  indeed  these 
mixed  and  incongruous  absurdities  be  blindly 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      39 

accepted  as  rational  statements  lest  the 
"sacred  interests  of  a  broad  and  generous 
patriotism"  be  impaired? 

Mr.  Goldwin  Smith's  argument  is  that  the 
Southern  captive,  amid  boundless  abundance, 
pined  and  died,  yearning  for  liberty,  while 
the  imprisoned  Northerner  had  no  thought 
or  care  beyond  his  need  of  food  and  shel- 
ter, thus  proving  the  Southerner  to  have 
been  of  the  earth  earthy,  and  the  North- 
erner to  have  been  spiritual  in  a  super- 
sublimated  degree! 

It  seems  a  little  hard  on  the  unillumi- 
nated  that  they  should  be  expected  to  digest 
this  sort  of  reasoning.  Yet  perhaps  we 
ought  to  take  such  logic  as  we  can  get,  and 
be  thankful  for  it,  inasmuch  as  the  sacred 
right  of  might  is  hard  to  vindicate  unless 
facts  can  be  forced  into  harmony  with  the 
general  hypothesis  that  the  South  is  a  re- 
gion of  savagery  while  the  North  is  a  garden 
spot  of  all  the  Christian  virtues. 


40      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

Here  are  a  few  more  extracts  from  this 
"latest  and  best"  of  American  histories: 

"It  was  a  contest/'  says  Mr.  Goldwin 
Smith,  "between  an  iron  despotism"  on  the 
one  hand  and  "spontaneous  zeal"  on  the 
other. 

"The  South,"  continues  the  author, 
"  almost  from  the  first,  resorted  to  conscrip- 
tion, ruthlessly  enforced  by  the  severest 
penalties,"  a  course  "  from  which  Northern 
democracy  shrank." 

"  The  South,"  he  declares,  "  had  the  supe- 
riority of  force  which  autocracy  lends  to 
war,"  while  "  the  North  had  the  advantage 
of  the  unforced  efforts  and  sacrifices  which 
free  patriotism  makes." 

And  as  conclusive  proof  of  the  invincible 
strength  which  "spontaneous  zeal"  and  the 
"unforced  efforts"  of  "free  patriotism"  con- 
fer upon  a  "popular  government"  Mr. 
Goldwin  Smith  might  aptly  have  called  at- 
tention to  the  memorable  interview  between 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      41 

the  British  Minister  and  the  Hon.  William 
H.  Seward: 

"I  can  touch  a  bell  at  my  right  hand," 
said  the  Secretary  of  State,  "and  order  the 
arrest  of  a  citizen  of  Ohio;  I  can  touch  the 
bell  again,  and  order  the  arrest  of  a  citizen 
of  New  York.  Can  Queen  Victoria  do  as 
much?" 

Lord  Lyons,  with  closed  eyes,  slowly  and 
silently  shook  his  head.  Yet  he  might  have 
replied:  "It  is  true,  Mr.  Secretary,  that  my 
sovereign,  in  this  our  modern  age,  has  not 
the  authority  which  you  so  justly  claim; 
nor  indeed  had  his  puissant  majesty,  George 
the  Third;  yet  I  doubt  not  that  some  such 
proof  of  power  might  have  been  given  in 
the  good  old  days  of  Henry  the  Eighth." 


The  liberty  of  the  press  is  a  subject  on 
which  our  author  grows  eloquent — holding 
that  in  the  North  it  was  absolutely  free, 


42      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

while  in  the  South  it  was  but  "a  sounding 
board  to  register  the  decrees  of  tyranny." 
On  topics  of  this  class  it  is  really  difficult 
to  judge  whether  or  not  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith 
is  writing  in  good  faith.  The  feeling  con- 
stantly arises  that  there  is  a  sly  sarcasm,  a 
lurking  irony  in  his  praises  of  the  North. 
In  the  blandest  manner  he  lays  down  broad 
propositions  which  are  not  only  destitute  of 
truth  but  which  are  specifically  and  in  de- 
tail the  exact  reverse  of  truth. 

Every  Northern  man  who  lived  through 
the  war  knows  that  under  the  Lincoln  gov- 
ernment there  was  no  such  thing  as  free- 
dom of  the  press.  It  is  true  that  before 
mobbing  or  destroying  that  palladium  of 
liberty  the  "  truly  loyal "  would  lash  them- 
selves into  a  state  of  moral  exaltation  by 
denouncing  as  "  rebel  sympathisers  "  all  who 
dared  to  remind  them  of  their  covenanted 
obligations — all  who  dared  to  quote  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  or  appeal  to 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      43 

the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  And 
so,  from  the  great  cities  on  the  Atlantic 
coast  to  the  little  villages  on  the  Western 
frontier,  every  opponent  of  radicalism,  every 
supporter  of  Statehood,  every  democratic 
editor  who  failed  to  raise  the  abject  squeak 
that  he  was  "a  war-democrat"  was  forth- 
with denounced  as  an  "enemy  to  free  in- 
stitutions," and  patriotically  raided,  robbed, 
muzzled  and  terrorized  until  crushed  out  of 
existence  or  brought  into  a  loyal  frame  of 
mind. 

Now  turn  to  the  South.  During  the 
whole  life  of  the  Confederacy  her  press  was 
absolutely  free.  Even  when  confronted  by 
the  united  hosts  of  Europe,  Asia,  and 
Africa — even  when  beset  by  tenfold  num- 
bers and  by  resources  mounting  up  to  ten 
times  ten — from  the  beginning  to  the  end — 
through  all  mutations  of  victory  or  defeat 
— no  matter  what  her  power  or  what  her 
needs,  the  Confederate  government,  by  spe- 


44      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

cial  enactment,  gave  absolute  exemption 
from  military  service  to  every  individual 
who  was  connected  with  her  newspaper 
press. 

"A  sounding  board,"  indeed!  Read  the 
editorials  of  the  chief  newspaper  published 
at  her  capital — the  editorials  of  the  RICH- 
MOND EXAMINER.  They  have  been  repub- 
lished  in  book  form  since  the  war  and  may 
be  easily  obtained.  The  editor  was  JOHN 
M.  DANIEL — a  man  of  note — able,  haughty, 
resolute;  a  recluse  bitter  with  the  bitterness 
of  misanthropy  yet  devoured  by  an  insati- 
able ambition.  Passionately  pleading  for  a 
better  equipment  in  the  field,  and  disgusted 
with  the  complacent  self-sufficiency  of  the 
war  office,  he  assailed  the  sanctities  of  that 
august  body,  and  thence  drifted  into  antag- 
onism with  Mr.  Davis7  entire  administration. 
The  breach  was  never  healed,  and  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end  of  the  war  he  searched 
out  and  gave  to  open  day  every  blot  and 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      45 

every  error  of  every  department  of  the  Con- 
federate government.  Never  since  the  days 
of  Sir  Philip  Francis  had  mortal  hand 
grasped  a  more  trenchant  pen,  and  never 
was  the  work  of  a  single  pen  fraught  with 
more  momentous  consequences.  Under  the 
Lincoln  despotism  a  writer  such  as  Daniel 
could  not  have  held  his  liberty  a  single  day. 

So  much  for  the  "autocracy"  which  lent 
the  South  her  "superiority  in  war."  So 
much  for  the  "iron  despotism"  which,  not- 
withstanding autocracy,  was  overthrown  by 
the  "spontaneous  zeal"  of  the  North! 

Does  not  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  know  that 
he  is  giving  his  readers  either  pointless  sar- 
casm or  utter  rubbish?  Does  he  not  know 
that  the  facts  are  notoriously  and  demon- 
strably  the  exact  reverse  of  what  he  states 
them  to  be? 

Again,  the  author  says  that  "the  South, 
almost  from  the  first,  resorted  to  conscrip- 
tion, ruthlessly  enforced  by  the  severest 


46      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

penalties,"  a  course  "  from  which  Northern 
democracy  shrank." 

Does  he  not  know  that  the  Northern  con- 
scription was  as  savage  and  remorseless  as 
that  of  the  invaded  country  was  orderly  and 
mild?  Does  he  not  know  that  what  the 
"  spontaneous  "  patriots  really  "  shrank " 
from  was  the  decoys  and  trepanners  who 
filled  the  union-saving  ranks  at  so  much 
per  union-saver?  Does  he  not  know  that 
on  a  single  occasion,  in  the  streets  of  a 
single  Northern  city,  more  than  a  thousand 
recusant  patriots  were  shot  down  like  mad 
dogs  \vhile  flying  in  terror  before  the 
crimps  and  kidnappers  and  press-gangs  of 
the  Lincoln  government? 

But  we  bid  adieu  to  Mr.  Gold  win  Smith. 
He,  in  turn,  is  to  be  set  aside.  He  is  alto- 
gether too  mild  a  mannered  man  to  meet 
present  demands.  His  vituperation  of  the 
"  rebels "  falls  short  in  acrimony,  while  his 
adulation  of  the  yankees  lacks  the  required 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      47 

unction.  ("  Rebel  "  and  "  Yankee  "—how 
pat  as  echo  the  one  term  calls  forth  the 
other.") 


The  history  committee  of  the  Grand 
Army  of  the  Republic  seems  to  have  finally 
settled  on  a  definite  plan.  And  the  plan  in 
some  respects  is  so  full  of  promise  that  it 
will  doubtless  be  adopted.  The  aim  is  two- 
fold— to  render  the  rebel  more  odious  than 
history  has  thus  far  depicted  him,  and  at 
the  same  time  to  put  the  yankee  in  such  a 
position  that  the  world  will  be  compelled 
to  admire  him! 

For  the  attainment  of  so  patriotic  an  end 
surely  nothing  more  should  be  needed  than 
the  Grand  Army's  simple  requisition.  The 
needful  appropriation  might  be  graced  by  a 
paean  or  two  to  the  old  flag,  and  all  should 
go  smoothly.  Else,  what  is  the  good  of 
victory  and  victory's  lawful  fruits? — fame, 


48      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

wealth,  honor,  reputation,  and  full  control 
of  "  history's  purchased  page  ?  " 

The  proposed  plan  is  to  be  official,  gov- 
ernmental, authoritative.  The  required  his- 
tory is  to  be  written  by  a  duly  appointed 
and  truly  loyal  personage  who  is  to  gather 
his  war  material  solely  from  the  "dis- 
patches" on  file  at  Washington.  But  right 
there,  we  apprehend,  will  be  found  the  fly 
in  the  ointment. 

Think  of  it.  History  by  the  transcrip- 
tion of  yankee  dispatches!  Bewildering 
dispatches !  Unhappy  historian ! — the  wings 
of  his  imagination  close  clipped,  and  him- 
self bound  by  both  literary  and  patriotic 
obligation  to  harmonize  with  the  actual  sit- 
uation, and  with  one  another,  the  varied 
dispatches  of  commanders  who  never,  no 
"never  misled  the  people  by  publishing 
false  news  of  military  successes !  " 

Take  a  handful  of  the  most  important 
dispatches  of  the  war.  Or,  still  better,  take 


A  GLANCE  AT  CUEEENT  HISTOEY.      49 

the  chief  dispatches  of  the  Grand  Army's 
chosen  heroes — the  radical  republican  gen- 
erals, the  men  of  immaculate  loyalty,  the 
gleaming  meteors  of  war — Benjamin  Butler, 
Banks,  Hooker,  Pope,  O.  O.  Howard. 

Turn  to  Hooker's  dispatch  when  he  had 
Lee  "at  his  mercy:"  "The  rebels  must 
attack  us  in  our  chosen  position,  or  inglo- 
riously  fly ! "  The  rebels  did  not  fly,  but 
they  attacked  ;  whereupon  the  gallant  corps 
of  O.  O.  Howard  marched  out  of  history 
with  unexampled  alacrity,  while  the  exultant 
dispatch-bearer  spurred  hard  for  Washington 
with  Stonewall's  troopers  at  his  heels! 

Butler's  dispatches  are  a  vibrating  note 
of  triumph  from  Big  Bethel  in  '61  to  Ber- 
muda Hundred  in  '64.  The  former  affair 
was  really  a  drawn  battle,  the  two  wings  of 
his  army  having  lost  their  way,  until  they 
at  length  collided,  whereupon  they  fired  into 
each  other  until  mutually  satisfied,  and  then 
simultaneously  retired.  Butler  claimed  it 


50      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

as  a  double  victory,  but  history  has  not 
allowed  the  claim.  In  his  Bermuda  cam- 
paign he  announced  his  position  as  being 
"  impregnable  against  any  numbers  which 
the  rebels  might  bring  against  him."  A 
narrow  space  between  the  rivers  was  the 
only  point  of  entrance  or  exit.  So  Beaure- 
gard  with  a  handful  of  troops  turned  the 
position  against  him,  or  "  bottled  him  up," 
as  Grant  expressed  it,  and  Butler,  as  a  war- 
rior, was  heard  from  no  more. 

General  Banks  was  pre-eminently  distin- 
guished as  a  dispatch  writer,  whether  wag- 
ing war  amid  the  cotton  bales  of  the  Red 
River  or  "chasing  the  rebels''  in  the  Val- 
ley of  Virginia.  But  his  campaigns  were 
peculiar,  being  modeled  on  the  maritime 
principle  of  fighting  in  a  circle,  so  that 
whenever  he  overtook  the  rebels  he  was 
pretty  sure  to  find  them  busy  among  his 
supply  trains.  The  hungry  Confederates 
held  him  in  affectionate  regard  and  gener- 


A  GLANCE  AT  CUKRENT  HISTORY.      51 

ally  spoke  of  him  as  "  Old  Stonewall's 
Commissary,"  altho  in  his  dispatches  he 
modestly  forbore  to  mention  the  rank  they 
gave  him. 

General  Pope  was  also  famous  for  his 
•dispatches,  and  never  were  those  dispatches 
more  aglow  with  victory  than  whilst  he  was 
being  cuffed  and  cudgeled  from  the  banks 
of  the  Rappahannock  to  the  walls  of  Wash- 
ington. At  the  very  moment  that  he  was 
declaring  the  rebels  to  be  in  headlong 
flight,  the  General-in-Chief,  Halleck,  frantic 
with  terror,  was  imploring  McClellan  to 
force  his  marches  and  save  the  Capital! 

Truly,  this  official  history  will  be  worth 
the  waiting  for;  particularly  as  the  histo- 
rian is  to  be  put  under  orders  to  arrange 
the  dispatches  "  patriotically," — that  is,  in 
such  shape  as  to  debase  the  rebel  and  exalt 
the  yankee! 

And  yet  this  subject  has  its  sad  side  too. 
The  "History"  will  have  its  vogue,  every- 


52      A  GLANCE  AT  CUKBENT  HISTORY. 

body  will  want  to  read  it,  but  during  that 
lively  period  what  will  the  poor  comic 
papers  do  ? 

Those  friends  of  the  Grand  Army  who 
have  a  sense  of  humor  are  apprehensive 
that  that  patriotic  body  is  in  danger  of 
being  laughed  out  of  existence.  And  in 
this  emergency  it  is  proposed  to  enlarge 
the  powers  of  Government  so  that  a  new 
code  of  laws  may  be  enacted — laws  which 
shall  make  it  a  penal  offence  to  speak  with 
levity  of  patriotic  persons,  or  to  utter  re- 
proachful or  slighting  or  irreverent  words 
when  speaking  of  any  project  which  enjoys 
the  support  of  "loyal"  men.  A  "truthful 
history"  is  to  be  ordered  "by  act  of  Con- 
gress," and  "publishers  are  to  be  fined  and 
imprisoned"  if  they  "issue  works"  which 
are  calculated  "to  wrongly  impress  the 
minds  of  the  growing  generation  regarding 
the  Rebellion." 

Considered  as  an  emanation  of  the  Puri- 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      53 

tan  spirit,  all  this  is  perfectly  logical.  He 
cares  not  who  fights  his  battles  so  that  he 
alone  is  left  to  record  them.  That  has 
always  been  a  Puritan  prerogative,  and  he 
does  not  propose  to  abandon  it.  He  has 
laid  aside  his  steeple  hat  and  his  sour  vis- 
age and  his  sad-colored  raiment,  but  at 
bottom  he  is  the  same  old  Puritan.  He  has 
dropped  his  sanctimonious  snuffle  and  the 
upward  turning  of  his  eyes  because  he 
began  to  perceive  that  those  outward  signs 
of  inward  grace  were  putting  the  unregene- 
rate  on  their  guard  against  him.  But  he 
is  still  the  genuine  article.  A  Pharisee 
always,  he  is  not  to  be  judged  by  any  com- 
mon standard;  for  a  being  of  his  lofty  pre- 
tentions,  if  not  incomparably  better  than 
other  men,  is  bound  to  be  immeasurably 
worse.  Moving  craftily  to  his  ends,  now 
with  a  flash  of  simulated  zeal  and  anon 
with  a  placid  saintliness,  but  always  disguis- 
ing his  tyranny  and  greed  by  special  claims 


54      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

to  holiness,  he  is  t<5-day  the  same  intrusive 
meddler,  with  the  same  inborn  passion  for 
regulating  other  peoples'  affairs,  that  he  was 
when  England  vomited  him  forth  to  the 
Continent  and  when  the  Continent  in  turn 
spewed  him  to  the  shores  of  the  New 
World. 

Self-styled  as  the  apostle  of  liberty,  he 
has  ever  claimed  for  himself  the  liberty  of 
persecuting  all  who  presumed  to  differ  with 
him.  Self-appointed  as  the  champion  of 
unity  and  harmony,  he  has  carried  discord 
into  every  land  that  his  foot  has  smitten. 
Exalting  himself  as  the  defender  of  free- 
dom of  thought,  his  favorite  practice  has- 
been  to  muzzle  the  press  and  to  adjourn 
legislatures  with  the  sword.  Vaunting  him- 
self as  the  only  true  disciple  of  the  living 
God,  he  has  done  more  to  bring  sacred 
things  into  disrepute  than  has  been  accom- 
plished by  all  the  apostates  of  all  the  ages, 
from  Judas  Iscariot  to  Robert  G.  Ingersoll. 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      55 

Born  in  revolt  against  law  and  order — breed- 
ing schism  in  the  Church  and  faction  in 
the  State — seceding  from  every  organization 
to  which  he  had  pledged  fidelity — nullifying 
all  law,  human  and  divine,  which  lacked 
the  seal  of  his  approval — evermore  setting 
up  what  he  calls  his  conscience  against  the 
most  august  of  constituted  authorities  and 
the  most  sacred  of  covenanted  obligations, 
he  yet  has  the  impregnable  conceit  to  pose 
himself  in  the  world's  eye  as  the  only  sur- 
viving specimen  of  political  or  moral  worth. 
On  two  occasions  he  has  been  clothed, 
for  a  brief  period,  with  absolute  power,  and 
in  each  instance  he  taught  his  victims  what 
"  persecution  "  really  meant.  In  the  tide  of 
time,  men  have  been  governed  in  many 
ways — by  councils  and  oligarchies — by 
prophets,  priests  and  kings — by  the  despot- 
ism of  tyrants  and  the  despotism  of  mobs — 
by  fools  and  philosophers — by  learned  sages 
and  by  savage  chieftains — but  they  knew 


56      A  GLANCE  AT  CUEEENT  HISTOEY. 

not  the  meaning  of  tyranny  until  they  fell 
under  the  Puritan  dominion,  and  learned 
what  it  was  to  be  governed  by  a  brood  of 
world-regenerating  saints  and  vanity-inspired 
busybodies. 

"Be  you  a  witch?"  roared  the  embodied 
majesty  of  Massachusetts  to  a  trembling 
paralytic. 

"  No,  your  honor,"  was  the  reply. 

"  Officer,  said  the  Court,  "  take  her  away 
and  pull  out  her  toe-nails  with  a  pair  of 
hot  pincers,  and  then  see  what  she  says; 
for  verily  it  is  written  that  'thou  shalt  not 
suffer  a  witch  to  live ! J ' 

Thus  with  the  act  of  cruelty  goes  ever 
the  perverted  text. 

uWe  were  an  hungered,  and  the  salvages 
had  much  store  of  corn,  and  many  gar- 
ments made  of  the  skins  of  beasts,  and  it 
came  to  pass  that  we  went  forth  and  fell 
upon  them,  smiting  them  hip  and  thigh, 
even  with  the  knife  of  Ehud  and  the  ham- 


A  GLANCE  AT  CUEKENT  HISTORY.      57 

mer  of  Jael,  crying  aloud  and  sparing  not, 
and  their  spoil  became  an  heritage  unto  us, 
even  unto  us  and  our  children." 

This  precious  screed,  which  serves  its 
turn  in  sanctifying  robbery  and  murder,  is 
in  fair  accord  with  that  practical  and  profit- 
able tenet  which  has  so  often  been  to  him 
a  rule  of  action:  "Thou  hast  said  in  Thy 
Word  that  'unto  the  saints  should  be  given 
the  earth  and  the  fulness  thereof,'  and  verily 
we  are  the  saints." 

That  the  press  should  be  silenced  at  his 
bidding,  that  courts  should  be  reconstructed 
and  constitutions  tossed  aside,  is  simply  a 
necessity  of  the  situation.  The  men  of 
Belial  must  be  put  down. 

Under  ordinary  circumstances  there  should 
seem  to  be  no  particular  harm  in  men's 
speaking  of  facts  which  they  had  witnessed, 
or  in  describing  events  in  which  they  had 
participated,  or  in  recording  the  history 
which  they  had  made. 


58      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

But  the  Puritan  has  always  been  a  law 
unto  himself,  and  by  virtue  of  his  "  supe- 
rior toleration"  he  has  now  become  a  law 
unto  others.  Moreover  being  guided  by 
that  inner  light  which  shines  for  him  alone, 
there  must  be  no  appeal  from  the  justice 
of  his  judgments  or  the  righteousness  of 
his  decrees. 

The  Puritan  heretofore  has  made  some 
little  amends  by  furnishing  to  mankind  an 
enduring  target  for  scorn  and  mirth  and 
derision.  But  now  we  are  to  be  deprived 
of  even  that  slight  compensation — the  poor 
privilege  of  laughing  at  him.  It  is  too  bad! 

It  is  related  of  the  Roman  tyrant,  Aure- 
lius  Commodus,  that,  fired  by  martial  ardor, 
"he  entered  the  arena,  sword  in  hand, 
against  a  wretched  gladiator  who  was  armed 
only  with  a  foil  of  lead,  and  that  after 
shedding  the  blood  of  his  helpless  victim, 
he  struck  medals  to  commemorate  the  in- 
glorious victory." 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      59 

That  fame  at  any  price  was  precious  in 
the  sight  of  Aurelius  is  sufficiently  evident, 
yet  we  nowhere  read  that  he  forbade  his 
people  to  laugh  or  weep  or  jibe  at  his 
novel  way  of  attaining  it. 


On  the  general  subject  of  State  Sover- 
eignty, and  its  relation  to  secession  and 
nullification,  it  is  well  enough  to  set  down 
a  few  facts  which  the  coming  history  will 
doubtless  fail  to  remember.  And  if  the 
facts  seem  "  calculated  to  impress  wrongly 
the  minds  of  the  growing  generation"  why 
"  so  much  the  worse  for  the  facts." 

That  sterling  patriot  and  life-long  Union- 
ist, John  Janney,  of  Loudoun  county,  was 
chosen  President  of  the  Peace  Convention 
of  1861.  On  being  twitted  by  a  youthful 
delegate  for  his  State  Sovereignty  tenden- 
cies, the  old  patriarch  said :  "  Disunion 
would  be  the  greatest  calamity  that  could 


60      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

befall  our  State;  but,  sir,  secession  is  her 
lawful  right,  and  she  alone  must  determine 
the  expediency  of  exercising  it." 
!<  Virginia,  sir,  is  to-day  a  free  and  sovereign 
State;  and  she  was  a  nation  one  hundred 
and  eighty  years  before  the  Union  was  born." 

This  principle  of  Statehood  had  been 
everywhere  recognized  by  Americans  up  to 
the  time  of  the  war,  and  nowhere  more 
persistently  than  by  the  people  of  Massa- 
chusetts and  the  New  England  States. 

In  her  convention  of  1780  Massachusetts 
declared  that  her  people  had  the  sole  and 
exclusive  right  of  governing  themselves  as 
a  free,  sovereign,  and  independent  State, 
and  that  they,  and  they  alone,  had  the  in- 
defeasible right  to  institute,  reform,  alter  or 
totally  change  that  government  whenever 
their  happiness  or  welfare  might  seem  to 
require  it. 

Thirteen  years  later,  when  war  with  Great 
Britain  seemed  almost  unavoidable,  the  New 


A  GLANCE  AT  CUEKENT  HISTORY.      61 

Englanders  put  forth  Hon.  Timothy  Dwight 
as  their  spokesman,  and  through  him  de- 
clared that  they  would  have  no  part  or  lot 
in  such  a  war,  and  sooner  than  have  it 
forced  upon  them  they  would  go  out  of  the 
Union. 

So,  too,  when  the  Louisiana  purchase 
was  under  discussion.  Massachusetts  bit- 
terly opposed  it  and  threatened  to  exercise 
what  she  called  her  "unquestioned  right  of 
secession"  if  the  measure  should  be  per- 
sisted in.  Senator  George  Cabot  was  the 
leader  on  that  occasion. 

Indeed,  from  the  very  beginning,  the  New 
England  States  left  nothing  untried  to  pre- 
vent the  territorial  growth  of  our  country. 
In  the  words  of  Bancroft,  "An  ineradicable 
dread  of  the  coming  power  of  the  South- 
west lurked  in  New  England,  especially  in 
Massachusetts."  And  if  they  could  have 
had  their  way,  the  Mississippi  river  would 
now  be  our  western  frontier. 


62      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

Another  distinguished  secessionist  was 
Senator  Pickering,  also  of  Massachusetts. 
He  did  not  like  Mr.  Jefferson's  administra- 
tion at  all.  There  was  something  about  it 
which  he  said  was  "  not  congenial "  to  his 
feelings  or  the  feelings  of  New  England. 
So  he  proposed  a  general  dissolution  of  the 
Union  with  a  view  to  the  formation  of  a 
Northern  Confederacy.  The  scheme  was 
favored  by  New  Hampshire,  Massachusetts, 
New  Jersey,  Rhode  Island,  Connecticut  and 
Vermont,  yet  it  was  deemed  imprudent  to 
act  without  the  alliance  of  New  York,  who 
was  promised  a  dominant  influence  in  the 
new  league.  But  New  York  declined  with 
thanks  and  the  project  fell  through. 

In  1804  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts 
asserted  and  defined  the  principle  of  seces- 
sion by  the  following  enactment:  "That  the 
annexation  of  Louisiana  to  the  Union  tran- 
scends the  constitutional  power  of  the 
Government  of  the  United  States.  It  forms 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      63 

a  new  Confederacy,  to  which  the  States 
united  by  the  former  compact  are  not 
bound  to  adhere." 

In  the  debate  on  the  bill  for  the  admis- 
sion of  Louisiana,  the  representative  of 
Massachusetts,  Hon.  Josiah  Quincy,  said: 
"  If  the  bill  passes,  it  is  my  deliberate  judg- 
ment that  it  is  virtually  a  dissolution  of  the 
Union;  that  it  will  free  the  States  from 
their  moral  obligation;  and,  as  it  will  be 
the  right  of  all,  so  it  will  be  the  duty  of 
some,  definitely  to  prepare  for  a  separation — 
amicably  if  they  can,  violently  if  they 
must."  At  this  conjuncture  a  Southern 
member  raised  the  point  that  "the  sugges- 
tion of  a  dissolution  of  the  Union  was  out 
of  order;  but,  on  appeal,  the  House  sus- 
tained Mr.  Quincy,  who,  in  an  elaborate 
argument,  vindicated  the  rightfulness  of  se- 
cession, saying,  among  other  things:  "Is 
there  a  principle  of  public  law  better  settled 
or  more  conformable  to  the  plainest  sugges- 


64      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

tions  of  reason  than  that  the  violation  of  a 
contract  by  one  of  the  parties  may  be  con- 
sidered as  exempting  the  other  from  its 
obligations?  Suppose  in  private  life  thirteen 
form  a  partnership,  and  ten  of  them  under- 
take to  admit  a  new  partner  without  the 
concurrence  of  the  other  three,  would  it  not 
be  at  their  option  to  abandon  the  partner- 
ship, after  so  palpable  an  infringement  of 
their  rights?" 

This  reasoning  goes  to  the  heart  of  the 
matter.  It  asserts  that  the  States  are  inde- 
pendent political  organisms — or  rather  that 
they  were  so  in  those  anti-bellum  days — and 
that  all  the  massed  power  of  majorities 
could  not  drag  down  the  principle  of  sov- 
ereignty, altho  that  principle  might  be 
enthroned  in  but  a  single  State. 

In  1812  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut 
refused  to  allow  their  militia  to  be  sent 
beyond  their  State  lines,  and  on  being  left 
to  their  own  devises  they  quarrelled  with 


A  GLANCE  AT  CUBKENT  HISTOBY.      65 

the  Administration  for  refusing  to  pay  them 
for  making  a  local  defense  on  their  own 
account.  Meantime  the  Governor  of  Massa- 
chusetts occupied  himself  in  calling  a  public 
fast-day  for  deploring  the  war  against  a 
nation  which  had  long  been  the  "  bulwark 
of  the  religion  we  profess."  The  good  old 
town  of  Plymouth,  having  risen  from  its 
knees,  presently  got  into  a  muscular  mood, 
and  having  captured  one  of  the  Congress- 
man who  voted  for  the  war,  forthwith  gave 
a  free  exhibition  of  their  untrammelled  lib- 
erty by  "kicking  him  through  the  town." 

Finally  the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachu- 
setts poured  oil  on  the  troubled  waters  by 
deciding  that  neither  Congress  nor  the  Presi- 
dent had  anything  to  do  with  the  State 
forces,  but  that  the  Governor  was  the  man. 
So  the  Governor  settled  the  matter  by  re- 
fusing the  request  of  the  President  for  her 
quota  of  troops,  and  the  Massachusetts 
House  of  Representatives  clinched  the  whole 


06      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

subject  by  declaring  the  war  to  be  unholy, 
and  begging  the  people  to  do  what  they 
could  to  thwart  it. 

In  short,  on  all  occasions  of  domestic 
disquiet  or  foreign  war  the  history  of  New 
England  has  been  a  history  of  revolt,  and 
threatened  separation,  and  nullification,  and 
secession,  and  persistent  defiance  of  the 
authority  of  Congress  and  the  Federal 
Courts. 

Jefferson's  Embargo  was  never  really 
tried,  because  the  New  England  States 
threatened  to  secede  if  its  provisions  should 
be  carried  out,  and  it  was  accordingly  re- 
pealed in  the  vain  hope  of  appeasing  them. 

But  it  was  on  the  actual  breaking  out  of 
hostilities  that  New  England  showed  the 
real  quality  of  her  "devotion  to  the  Union." 
She  not  only  did  her  best  to  nullify  every 
law  passed  by  Congress  for  raising  men 
and  money,  but  some  of  "her  best  citizens" 
intrigued  with  British  agents  for  an  alliance 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      67 

with  Canada,  while  others  hung  out  signal 
lights  to  enable  the  enemy's  fleet  to  cap- 
ture our  disabled  cruisers — deeds  which 
would  have  richly  deserved  the  halter  if 
committed  by  ordinary  mortals,  but  which 
won  for  them  the  enthusiastic  plaudits  of 
their  kind. 

That  the  Hartford  Convention  of  1814  was 
not  simply  a  secession  but  a  treasonable 
body  admits  of  no  rational  doubt.  The 
object  was  not  merely  to  destroy  the  Union, 
but  to  enleague  the  revolted  States  with 
Great  Britain,  so  that  the  new  Confederacy 
and  its  ally  might  be  in  a  position  to  sub- 
jugate the  adhering  States.  The  present  race 
of  New  England  apologists  pretend  that  the 
Convention  was  "merely  an  assemblage  of 
some  of  the  Federal  leaders,"  but  the  plain 
facts  of  history  discredit  their  claim.  The 
delegates  from  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island 
and  Massachusetts  were  regularly  elected  by 
the  Legislatures  of  those  States,  and  con- 


68      A  GLANCE  AT  CUKBENT  HISTORY. 

stituted  in  every  respect  an  official  body 
acting  in  a  representative  capacity.  Their 
deliberations  were  held  in  secret,  and  no 
full  account  of  their  proceedings  has  ever 
been  published,  but  they  publicly  announced 
their  adherence  to  the  doctrine  of  State 
Sovereignty,  full  and  absolute,  declaring 
that:  "When  emergencies  occur  which  are 
either  beyond  the  reach  of  judicial  tribunals 
or  too  pressing  to  admit  of  delay  incident 
to  their  forms,  States  which  have  no  com- 
mon umpire  must  be  their  own  judges  and 
execute  their  own  decisions." 


In  1861  the  Southern  people,  weary  of 
discord,  exercised  this  sovereign  right.  They 
withdrew  from  their  restless  and  conten- 
tious neighbors,  and  formed  a  more  harmo- 
nious Union  among  themselves,  asking  only 
to  be  let  alone.  The  "emergency"  which 
confronted  them  was  the  enthronement  of 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      69 

a  hostile  and  revolutionary  faction — a  fac- 
tion which  at  a  fatal  moment  had  come 
into  power  through  a  triple  division  among 
the  law-abiding  classes. 

These  new  rulers  had  chiefly  distinguished 
themselves  as  the  enemies  of  existing  insti- 
tutions— their  political  and  social  creed 
being,  in  effect,  "Whatever  is,  is  wrong." 
They  were  fond  of  execrating  the  Union  as 
"a  league  with  hell,"  and  denouncing  the 
Constitution  as  "a  covenant  with  death." 
They  derided  the  highest  courts  of  the  land 
as  "  crimping  houses  of  iniquity,"  and  villi- 
fied  the  old  flag  as  "a  flaunting  lie!" 

But  on  coming  into  power  they  threw  off 
all  disguise,  and  shamelessly  started  a  war 
of  conquest  in  pretended  defense  of  the 
very  principles  and  symbols  which  they  had 
so  bitterly  reviled. 

With  paralyzing  logic  they  mutilated  the 
States  on  the  plea  that  the  States  were 
"indestructible;"  they  debarred  them  from 


70      A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY. 

the  Union  while  declaring  the  Union  to  be 
"indissoluble,"  and  they  patched  up  and 
distorted  the  Constitution  on  the  pretence 
that  they  were  the  only  class  who  rev- 
erenced its  "inviolability."  Having  thus 
approved  themselves  the  only  true  cham- 
pions of  "the  sacred  principle  of  govern- 
ment by  consent,"  they  rounded  out  their 
perfect  work  by  converting  the  States  into 
satrapies,  and  holding  them  under  bayonet 
rule  until  the  conquered  people  consented 
to  ratify  the  whole  of  their  rump  perform- 
ances. No  wonder  they  are  yearning  for  a 
historian  of  their  own! — no  wonder  they 
are  drafting  laws  to  give  that  historian  sole 
control  of  the  facts! 

As  for  the  South,  she  accepted  war  when 
no  other  recourse  was  left  her.  And  she 
has  borne  its  results,  bitter  tho  they  have 
been,  with  the  serenity  of  fortitude  and  the 
dignity  of  silence.  Conscious  of  rectitude 
in  aim  and  deed,  she  has  been  willing  to 


A  GLANCE  AT  CURRENT  HISTORY.      71 

leave  her  cause  to  the  tribunal  of  posterity. 
Like  the  princess  in  the  Eastern  story,  she 
has  held  her  course,  unshaken  by  clamor, 
unmoved  by  taunts  and  sneers,  and  without 
one  backward  glance  has  swept  on  toward 
the  Golden  Fountain  of  the  Future.  She 
has  been  content  to  leave  her  name  and 
memory  "to  men's  charitable  speeches,  to 
foreign  nations  and  the  next  age."  She 
frankly  concedes  that  under  the  new  Union, 
and  the  revised  Constitution,  and  the  im- 
proved laws,  and  the  generally  amended 
polity,  there  may  have  been  innovations 
with  which  she  has  not  kept  pace,  and 
which  she  does  not  fully  comprehend.  But 
when  she  is  threatened  with  pains  and  pen- 
alties for  presuming  to  relate  to  her  own 
children  the  simple  annals  of  her  life,  she 
believes  that  it  is  fairly  within  her  right 
to  enter  a  mild  and  respectful  yet  earnest 
protest. 


ON  HISTORY  AS  TAUGHT  IN  OUR 
SCHOOLS. 


A  LETTER  OF  INVITATION. 


The  following  circular  letter  explains  itself.  It  was 
heartily  responded  to,  and  resulted  in  a  magnificent 
assemblage  at  Lee  Camp  Hall  on  the  evening  of  Octo» 
ber  19,  1897.  The  meeting  was  addressed  by  a  number 
of  the  foremost  citizens  of  Virginia,  among  them :  Con- 
sul-General Fitzhugh  Lee,  Governor  O'Ferrall,  Mayor 
Taylor,  Dr.  Hunter  McGuire,  Colonel  Gordon  McCabe, 
Professor  McGuire,  and  others.  A  permanent  organi- 
zation was  effected,  with  Dr.  McGuire  as  presiding 
officer,  and  the  proposed  task  of  banishing  false  histo- 
ries from  the  schools  and  colleges  of  the  State  was 
promptly  entered  upon  and  seems  in  a  fair  way  of  being 
thoroughly  accomplished. 


ON  HISTORY  AS  TAUGHT  IN  OUR 
SCHOOLS. 


Headquarters  Grand  Camp  Confederate  Vete- 
rans, Department  of  Virginia,  Glen  Allen, 
Va.,  September  29,  fSp?. 

DEAE  SIB, — The  Grand  Commander,  as  au- 
thorized by  the  Advisory  Council,  hereby 
extends  to  you  a  cordial  invitation  to  attend 
a  general  meeting  to  be  held  at  Lee  Camp 
Hall,  in  Richmond,  Va.,  on  Tuesday,  Octo- 
ber 19,  1897,  at  8  o'clock  P.  M. 

This  proposed  gathering  of  leading  edu- 
cators and  eminent  citizens  of  Virginia  is 
called  for  the  purpose  of  formulating  a 
definite  plan  for  the  exclusion  from  our 


78  ON  HISTORY  AS  TAUGHT 

schools  and  colleges  of  all  histories  which 
are  grossly  erroneous  in  their  statements, 
or  which,  in  their  animus,  are  unfriendly  to 
the  State. 

A  careful  examination  of  those  school 
histories  which  are  now  in  general  use 
among  us  discloses  the  fact  that  they  are 
all  written  by  persons  who  placidly  assume 
that  the  American  States  in  some  unex- 
plained way  had  divested  themselves  of 
their  Statehood  at  some  unnamed  period 
prior  to  1860,  and  that  the  States  which  at 
that  time  exercised  their  sovereign  right  by 
withdrawing  from  the  federal  union  thereby 
committed  an  act  of  "rebellion"  against 
their  former  associates! 

This  false  assumption,  first  urged  by  des- 
perate partisans,  and  afterwards  dogmatised 
into  an  article  of  faith,  now  dominates  all 
these  Northern  historians,  and  vitiates  every 
portion  of  their  work.  And  thus  our  in- 
genuous youth  are  taught  to'  believe  that 


IN  OUR  SCHOOLS,  79 

their  fathers  were  traitors  to  their  country 
and  subvertors  of  the  Constitution  and  the 
laws.  True,  in  most  of  these  histories  the 
word  "  rebel "  has  been  cancelled,  and  in 
its  place  the  term  "confederate"  now  ap- 
pears; and  there  are  also  favorable  com- 
ments on  the  prowess  of  these  confederates 
and  on  the  military  skill  of  their  leaders. 
But  always  and  everywhere  the  inference 
is  constant  that  the  Southern  people  were 
false  to  the  obligation  of  patriotism  and 
enemies  of  their  country. 

Lord  Macau  lay  utters  an  important  truth 
when  he  declares  that  "a  people  who  take 
no  pride  in  the  achievements  of  their  an- 
cestors will  never  achieve  anything  worthy 
to  be  remembered  by  their  descendants." 
And  our  conquerors  now  assure  us  that  the 
highest  favor  we  can  expect  from  the  world 
is  •"  its  merciful  silence." 

Are  we  indeed  reduced  to  this  narrow 
choice  between  infamy  and  oblivion  ? 


80  ON  HISTORY  AS  TAUGHT 

Let  us  hope  not. 

And  let  us  act  on  that  hope. 

There  is  no  desire  to  re-open  settled 
questions,  or  to  evade  the  physical  results 
pf  the  war.  We  accepted  an  appeal  to  the 
sword,  and  we  abide  the  result  without  re- 
pining. But  never  did  we  put  to  the  hazard 
of  war  our  right  to  speak  the  truth,  or  the 
right  of  our  children  to  hear  it. 

Our  race,  from  the  dawn  of  its  history, 
has  freely  criticised  the  acts  and  views  and 
purposes  of  both  friend  and  foe.  Briton 
and  Dane,  Saxon  and  Norman,  Yorkist  and 
Lancastrian,  Puritan  and  Cavalier,  in  song 
and  story  and  on  the  written  page  have 
recounted  their  stirring  deeds  through  a 
thousand  years;  and  ever  the  defeated  side, 
strengthened  by  adversity  and  nourished  by 
tales  of  fortitude,  has  risen  again  to  the 
level  of  its  victor;  and  the  conflicting 
breeds,  welded  not  less  by  war  than  by 
comity,  have  become  at  last  the  master- 


IN  OUR  SCHOOLS.  81 

race  of  all  the  earth.  Their  stories  of 
mutual  strife  awaken  a  spirit  of  generous 
emulation,  and  the  memorials  of  their  fellest 
battles  adorn  a  common  Pantheon  and  aug- 
ment their  heritage  of  a  common  glory. 
For  in  an  atmosphere  of  free  utterance, 
hatred  cannot  long  abide.  It  is  born  of  a 
sense  of  injustice,  and  gathers  its  chief 
nourishment  from  repression.  And  so,  in 
behalf  of  a  rational  and  lasting  concord — a 
concord  open  as  the  day — with  nothing  to 
conceal  and  nothing  to  simulate — standing 
on  exact  level  with  our  conquerors — we 
propose  to  follow  the  ancient  usage  of  our 
race.  We  propose  to  relate  the  annals  of 
our  own  war  to  our  own  children  in  our 
own  way.  We  propose  to  describe  in  the 
plainest  and  simplest  language  the  causes 
and  the  character  of  that  war.  For  only 
thus  can  we  rescue  from  infamy  the  mem- 
ory of  our  fallen  comrades.  Only  thus  can 
we  pay  a  fitting  tribute  to  the  devotion  of 


82  ON  HISTORY  AS  TAUGHT 

our  noble  women.  Only  thus  can  we  blot 
out  the  felon-brand  of  "TRAITOR"  from  the 
kingly  brow  of  Robert  Edward  Lee. 

Let  not  our  Northern  friends  mistake  our 
purpose.  The  war  is  over.  Decisive  bat- 
tles are  the  expression  of  a  law  which  is 
beyond  themselves;  they  follow  the  trend 
of  events  and  are  but  the  incidents  of  a 
power  which  overshadows  them.  Appomat- 
tox  was  the  culmination  of  a  strife  which 
was  active  before  the  Union  was  born,  and 
the  decree  there  rendered  is  as  absolute 
and  as  irrevocable  as  that  of  Culloden  or 
of  Hastings.  Never  again  will  peril  ap- 
proach our  country  on  territorial  lines. 
What  may  arise  within  the  heart  and  centre 
of  the  Republic  it  were  idle  to  conjecture. 
Perhaps  only  a  phantom,  formless  and  void. 
But  should  that  phantom  take  shape,  should 
it  cast  its  dark  shadow  along  the  northern 
horizon,  it  might  well  befall  that  the  des- 
pised South,  true  to  herself,  unshaken  in 


IN  OUB  SCHOOLS.  83 

her  integrity,  faithful  to  her  traditions  and 
her  principles,  might  again  lead  in  giving 
to  all  our  land  the  priceless  boon  of  free- 
dom joined  with  order,  of  liberty  linked 
with  law. 

If,  sir,  you  share  the  views  thus  meagerly 
outlined,  or  any  of  them,  it  is  earnestly 
hoped  that  you  will  join  us  in  this  effort. 
We  need  your  counsel,  your  influence, 
your  intellectual  and  moral  support.  The 
eleventh  hour  is  upon  us,  and  unless  we 
act  unitedly  and  with  sustained  energy  the 
memory  of  our  Cause  will  go  down  to  pos- 
terity loaded  with  derision  and  shame. 

We  sincerely  hope  that  you  will  come,  at 
almost  any  sacrifice,  to  help  in  this  patriotic 

work. 

By  order  of 

JOHN  CUSSONS, 

THOMAS  ELLETT,  Grand  Commander. 

Adjutant-  General. 


ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY. 


GRAND  COMMANDER'S  ADDRESS. 


The  object  of  the  Lee  Camp  Hall  Meeting  of  Septem- 
ber 29,  1897,  was  outlined  by  the  Grand  Commander  in 
the  following  address: 


ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY. 


The  hearty  applause  that  greeted  Dr. 
McGuire's  utterances  had  hardly  died  away 
when  Colonel  Cussons  came  forward.  He 
was  given  a  most  cordial  greeting,  which 
he  acknowledged  with  a  bow.  The  Grand 
Commander  spoke  in  clear  voice  and  with 
great  vigor  and  earnestness.  He  said: 

Mr.  Chairman,  Friends,  Comrades, 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen: 

Seven  years  ago  the  Confederate  Veterans 
of  Virginia,  through  their  Grand  Camp,  ap- 
pointed a  committee  on  history.  The  chief 
object  was  to  point  out  the  need  for  a  text- 


90          ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY. 

book  which  should  give  a  fair  and  impar- 
tial account  of  our  late  war.  And  it  was 
believed  that  the  appearance  of  such  a 
work  would  at  once  banish  from  our  schools 
the  biassed  and  misleading  histories  which 
were  then  in  use.  That  hope  has  been 
disappointed.  It  is  true  that  able  pens  re- 
sponded promptly  to  the  committee's  call, 
and  Virginia  to-day  is  notably  rich  in  school 
histories  of  the  very  highest  order.  And 
yet  these  meritorious  books  have  failed  to 
displace  the  unworthy  ones. 

In  literary  ability,  in  fidelity  to  truth,  in 
lucidity  of  narrative,  in  simplicity  of  style, 
in  skill  of  compression,  and  in  all  the 
mechanical  qualities  which  comprise  the 
bookmaker's  art,  we  shall  nowhere  find  any- 
thing superior  to  the  works  of  our  own 
Virginia  writers.  And  these  books  have 
the  widest  range  of  adaptability.  They  are 
suited  to  pupils  of  every  age.  From  Mrs. 
Williamson's  "Life  of  Lee,"  a  model  of 


ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY.          91 

historical  biography  for  the  infant  class — 
through  the  primary  and  advanced  text- 
books of  Maury  and  Dr.  Jones,  and  Mrs. 
Pendleton  Lee,  and  Miss  Mary  Tucker 
Magill — up  to  the  sedate  and  scholarly  ex- 
position of  J.  L.  M.  Curry,  there  is  abso- 
lutely no  need  which  has  not  been  most 
abundantly  met. 

What,  then,  bars  the  way?  Why  is  it 
that  we  cannot  get  into  the  hands  of  our 
own  children  these  annals  of  our  own  life 
by  our  own  authors? 

I  hold  in  my  hand  a  symbol  of  the 
power  which  forbids  it. 

This  history,  among  all  the  histories 
which  have  been  written  in  this  historic 
age,  is  the  only  one,  we  are  gravely  in- 
formed, that  is  at  all  adapted  to  school-room 
requirements — the  only  one  which  possesses 
the  mystic  attribute  of  "teachability!" 

And,  surely,  if  "  teachability "  means  an 
aptitude  for  reaching  false  conclusions  by 


92          ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY. 

smooth  and  subtle  ways — for  making  the 
worse  appear  the  better  part — for  blandly 
distorting  facts,  and  with  an  air  of  candor 
preverting  honest  truths — then,  indeed,  may 
this  book  be  pronounced  "teachable"  in  a 
very  eminent  degree. 

Like  some  other  evil  things,  it  is  sugared 
over  with  adulation.  And  where  it  most 
abounds  in  florid  compliment  it  is  most 
misleading  and  most  dangerous.  Its  worst 
vices,  however,  are  not  of  the  gross  and 
obvious  kind.  They  are  unobtrusive.  They 
lie  beneath  the  surface.  But  they  are  con- 
stant; and  during  the  war  period  they  are 
close-woven  into  the  very  texture  of  the 
story.  To  adequately  show  this  by  citations 
would  be  a  tedious  task.  And  to  quote  a 
passage  here  and  there  would  be  to  imitate 
the  traveller  who  tried  to  give  his  friends 
an  idea  of  the  magnitude  of  the  Coliseum 
by  showing  them  a  few  bricks  which  he 
had  wrenched  out  of  its  walls. 


ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY.          93 

Here  is  a  specimen  brick:  "Invasion  of 
Maryland."  This  book  always  calls  it  an 
"invasion"  when  Southern  troops  go  North. 
When  Northern  troops  go  South  it  calls  it 
"marching  to  the  front."  I  quote:  "Flushed 
with  success,  Lee  now  crossed  the  Potomac 
and  entered  Maryland,  hoping  to  secure 
volunteers  and  excite  an  insurrection." 

Think  of  it.  Robert  E.  Lee  an  insurrec- 
tionist ! 

That  is  what  we  have  been  teaching  our 
children  for  years.  That  is  what  we  are 
teaching  them  to-day.  Is  it  any  wonder 
that  they  are  getting  a  bit  ashamed  of  us? 
that  they  are  telling  us  "the  less  said  about 
the  war  the  better?" 

But  while  we  are  on  the  subject  of 
insurrection,  let  us  see  what  this  teachable 
history  has  to  say  about  Old  Ossawattomie 
Brown,  the  Free-Soil  desperado  of  Kansas. 
Brown  was  reputed  the  most  lawless  and 
the  most  fearless  of  all  those  freebooters — a 


94  ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY. 

man  of  iron  nerve  and  bloody  hand — and 
with  this  reputation  he  was  chosen  Ijy  the 
New  England  Abolitionists  to  carry  fire  and 
sword  to  the  peaceful  homes  of  Virginia. 
It  was  those  social  regenerators  who  fur- 
nished forth  his  military  chest.  They 
equipped  him  with  weapons  for  the  arming 
of  a  thousand  men,  and  sent  him  on  a 
crusade  which  must  inevitably  seal  his 
doom  unless  he  should  be  able  to  incite 
and  maintain  that  most  frightful  of  all 
human  scourges — a  servile  insurrection  ! 

And  what  does  this  teachable  history  have 
to  say  about  it? — this  history  which  teaches 
that  Lee  was  an  insurrectionist  ?  We  find 
Brown  exalted  into  a  hero  and  a  martyr, 
rather  than  a  criminal.  He  is  depicted  as 
a  brooding  enthusiast,  inspired  by  lofty 
motives,  but  unable  to  carry  out  his  great 
designs. 

No  hint  is  given  of  the  men  whom  he 
cruelly  murdered  on  that  tranquil  Sabbath 


ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY.          95 

morning  at  Harper's  Ferry.  No  mention  is 
made  of  the  peaceful  citizens  whom  he 
seized  in  their  beds,  and  shackeled  as  hos- 
tages, or  slew  from  mere  lust  of  blood.  In 
short,  we  are  assured  that  these  deeds  of 
his  had  really  no  meaning  in  them.  And 
if  any  one  was  to  blame  it  was  the  South- 
ern people,  who,  this  teachable  history  tells 
us,  put  themselves  in  a  wrong  light  by  get- 
ting excited  and  rushing  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  raid  was  "  significant  of  Northern 
sentiment."  "It  was  soon  known,"  says 
this  history,  "that  in  his  wild  design  Brown 
had  asked  counsel  of  no  one,"  and  with 
this  cool  prevarication  the  whole  subject  is 
dismissed.  There  is  no  allusion  to  the  toll- 
ing of  funeral  bells  on  the  day  of  his 
execution.  There  is  no  mention  of  special 
services  at  churches  draped  in  mourning, 
or  of  flags  hanging  at  half-mast.  And  yet 
these  things  were  so.  And  to-day  he  stands 
in  apotheosis,  the  divinity  of  a  new  sect, 


96          ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY. 

with  an  aureole  about  his  brow,  and  a 
legend  which  declares  that  his  mode  of 
death  "has  made  the  gallows  as  sacred  as 
the  cross."  And  his  name  and  fame  have 
united  to  inspire,  if  not  our  national  anthem, 
at  least  the  battle-song  of  the  republic's 
conquering  armies. 

The  instincts  of  the  South  were  right! 
In  the  incursion  of  this  tough  old  marau- 
der, half  highwayman,  and  half  fanatic,  we 
had  premonition  of  other  hordes,  more 
numerous,  yet  not  more  scrupulous,  who, 
like  him,  were  to  ravage  the  land  with  a 
zeal  quickened  by  rapacity,  with  a  rapacity 
sanctified  by  zeal. 

I  should  like  to  call  your  attention  to 
the  cold  and  formal  terms  which  are  used 
in  relating  Federal  disasters,  and  to  contrast 
them  with  the  effusion  and  glow  and  tumult 
which  depict  their  victories.  The  Army  of 
the  Potomac,  this  teachable  history  informs 
us,  was  "checked"  at  Fredericksburg;  and 


ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY.          97 

again  "  checked  "  at  Chancellorsville.  Which 
is  very  true!  It  is  likewise  true  that  the 
army  of  Bonaparte  was  "checked"  at 
Waterloo.  But  no  French  patriot,  not  even 
Victor  Hugo,  ever  thought  of  putting  it  in 
that  way! 

Now,  turn  the  page,  and  see  a  Federal 
victory.  We  are  carried  at  once  into  a 
new  atmosphere — an  atmosphere  of  the 
vivid,  the  picturesque,  the  dramatic.  Behold 
Sheridan — the  illustrious,  and  the  illustrated 
— he  of  the  "coal-black  steed,"  spurning 
the  dull  earth  beneath  him,  "covered  with 
foam,"  his  nostrils  blown  wide  open,  his 
tail  in  convulsions,  "dashing  to  the  new 
front,"  and  sending  the  "plundering  Con- 
federates whirling  up  the  Valley  of  the 
Shenandoah." 

On  the  next  page  in  a  foot-note,  there  is 
a  brief  reference  to  one  of  our  cavalry  com- 
manders, General  Forrest.  It  is  the  only 
mention  that  this  teachable  history  makes  of 


98  ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY. 

that  remarkable  man,  and  every  word  is  to 
his  disparagement.  And  yet  in  all  quarters 
of  the  globe,  wherever  the  art  of  war  is 
studied,  the  career  of  Forrest  has  been  a 
marvel  and  a  delight.  A  wandering  star  in 
the  military  firmament,  his  magnitude  has 
not  yet  been  measured  nor  his  orbit  traced, 
but  his  dazzling  coruscations  have  bewildered 
the  strategists  of  all  climes  and  tribes,  from 
Delhi  to  Kamschatka,  from  Sierra  Leone  to 
the  Horse  Guards.  What  would  have  been 
disaster  and  black  ruin  to  other  command- 
ers was  to  him  but  a  mild  exhilaration. 
Hemmed  in  by  tenfold  numbers,  we  catch 
again  the  inspiration  of  his  cheery  words : 

"Now,  men;  we've  got  'em  just  right! 
They're  all  around  us,  and  whichever  way 
we  go  we  shall  mix  up  with  'em!" 

Truly,  it  might  be  said  of  him: 

"Most  master  of  himself  and  least  encumbered 
When  most  beset,  surrounded  and  outnumbered." 


ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY.          99 

At  First  Manassas  (Bull  Run)  we  have 
the  astounding  information  that  "the  Con- 
federates were  driven  from  the  field,"  but 
were  subsequently  rallied.  Then  a  shell 
burst  among  the  teamsters'  wagons,  a  caisson 
was  upset,  and  McDowell's  men  fled,  etc. 
This  trick  of  statement  runs  all  through 
the  book.  It  is  never  the  "Northern  army" 
that  is  defeated ;  but  "  McDowell's  men,"  or 
Porter's  corps,  or  the  troops  under  Buell. 
McDowell,  it  is  true,  was  one  of  the  nine 
generals  who,  in  succession,  commanded  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac,  but  we  have  no  right 
to  assume  that  all  school  children  are 
familiar  with  that  fact. 

The  author  is  definite  enough  when  he 
describes  the  battle  of  Nashville.  He  does 
not  say  that  the  army  of  General  Hood 
was  "checked."  But  he  says  that  General 
Thomas  "drove  the  Confederate  forces  out 
of  their  intrenchments  into  headlong  flight;" 
that  "the  Union  cavalry  thundered  upon 


100        ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY. 

their  heels  with  remorseless  energy,"  and 
that  "the  entire  Confederate  army  was  dis- 
solved into  a  rabble  of  demoralized  fugi- 
tives," only  "the  rear-guard"  offering  any 
effective  resistance.  But  he  does  not  tell 
you  that  that  dauntless  rear-guard,  which 
baffled  and  demoralized  and  outfought  ten 
times  its  own  numbers,  was  commanded  by 
the  peerless  Forrest. 

On  the  fatal  third  day  of  Gettysburg  this 
author  is  equally  definite.  He  does  not 
simply  say  that  Lee's  army  was  "checked," 
but  he  goes  into  details.  He  depicts  it  in 
all  the  glory  of  its  strength,  so  that  he  may 
show  how  magnificently  his  friends  des- 
troyed it.  "Out  of  the  woods  swept  the 
Confederate  double  battle-line  over  a  mile 
long."  *  *  *  "A  thrill  of  admiration 
ran  along  the  Union  ranks,  as,  silently  and 
with  disciplined  steadiness  that  magnificent 
column  of  eighteen  thousand  men  moved 
up  the  slope."  And  then  we  are  told  how, 


ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY.         101 

when  it  met  its  masters,  "whole  companies 
rushed  as  prisoners  into  the  Union  lines, 
while  the  rest  fled,  panic-stricken,  from  the 
field."  Which  is  not  true. 

From  the  summit  of  Round  Top,  a  pris- 
oner, I  saw  that  charge.  I  saw  groups  of 
Pickett's  heroes  waving  their  battle  flags 
and  cheering  on  the  crest  of  the  works 
which  they  had  won.  But  their  ranks  had 
been  thinned  almost  to  a  skirmish  line 
while  they  were  sweeping  through  the  open 
valley,  and  as  they  closed  on  their  colors 
to  assail  the  breastworks,  their  front  pre- 
sented only  a  series  of  scanty  fragments. 
A  number  of  these  fragmentary  bodies,  with 
a  heroism  never  surpassed,  carried  the  works 
at  their  front;  but  soon  they  were  caught 
in  flank  and  enveloped  by  the  Federal  re- 
serves. These  movements  were  skillfully 
executed,  apparently  by  company  officers, 
and  the  Federal  success,  I  think,  was  mainly 
due  to  the  coolness  and  courage  of  those 


102         ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY. 

men  on  the  second  line.  But  at  best  the 
victory  went  by  a  narrow  chance.  It  did 
not  seem  to  me  that  it  was  exclusively  "a 
thrill  of  admiration "  that  was  running 
through  the  Union  ranks.  Couriers  and 
staff  officers  were  moving  too,  and  wagon 
trains  were  thundering  to  the  east,  and  a 
rear-guard  was  swiftly  forming,  and  all  the 
premonitary  symptoms  of  a  sudden  retreat 
were  in  the  air.  A  colonel  of  cavalry 
dashed  up  to  the  prisoners  and  threatened 
to  ride  down  and  sabre  and  utterly  exter- 
minate any  rebel  who  should  attempt  to 
escape.  The  rebels  responded  with  a  jubi- 
lant "  hurrah  for  the  Southern  Confederacy," 
and  the  indignant  colonel  reviled  them  and 
rode  away.  There  were  barely  a  dozen  of 
them — Captain  Tom  Christian  of  General 
Law's  staff,  and  Frank  Price  of  Hood's,  and 
a  few  scouts  from  the  Texas  brigade.  But 
they  felt  that  it  was  their  battle.  The 
cannonade  had  been  effective,  and  when 


ON  " TEACHABLE"  HISTORY.         103 

Pickett's  steady  line  moved  forward  there 
was  no  one  in  the  vicinity  of  Round  Top 
who  seemed  to  doubt  that  it  would  sweep 
everything  before  it. 

The  day,  alas!  went  against  us.  But  it  is 
not  true  that  "whole  companies  rushed  as 
prisoners  into  the  Union  lines."  It  is  not 
true  that  the  remnants  of  that  devoted  band 
"fled  panic-stricken  from  the  field."  The 
author  has  been  misinformed.  These  are 
fabrications.  They  are  smooth,  smiling,  de- 
liberate Puritan  fabrications,  and  he  who 
coined  them  will  have  his  portion  in  the 
burning  lake,  his  share  in  the  everlasting 
bonfire.  They  are  needless  fabrications.  The 
battle  was  a  brilliant  one;  the  charge  su- 
perb; gallantly  made  and  bravely  met;  and 
to  disparage  either  side  is  only  to  belittle 
the  other.  They  are  also  shallow  and 
stupid  fabrications.  Where  was  the  general- 
ship of  Meade  that  he  did  not  spring  forward 
his  victorious  linss  to  annihilate  this  "panic- 


104        ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY. 

stricken"  crew?  Why  did  he  allow  Lee, 
for  ten  days,  to  remain  on  Northern  soil, 
subsisting  his  troops,  conducting  his  pris- 
oners, and  marching  along  with  his  ten 
miles  of  wagon-trains? 


Of  StonewalFs  brilliant  campaign  against 
the  four  Federal  armies  of  Milroy  and 
Banks  and  Shields  and  Fremont  there  are 
but  a  few  meagre  lines,  which  conclude 
with  the  statement  that  "Jackson  finally 
made  good  his  escape,  having  burned  the 
bridges  behind  him." 

And  yet  our  distinguished  chairman,  who 
served  on  Jackson's  staff,  and  who  has  trav- 
elled widely  in  Europe,  will  tell  you  that 
some  of  the  foremost  soldiers  and  military 
students  of  England  have  declared  to  him 
that  this  campaign  was  "the  finest  example 
of  strategy  and  tactics  of  which  the  world 


ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY.         105 

has  any  record;  that  in  this  series  of 
marches  and  battles  there  was  never  a 
blunder  committed  by  Jackson;  that  this 
campaign  was  superior  to  either  of  those 
made  by  Napoleon  in  Italy ;  that  it  is  taught 
in  European  colleges  as  a  model  of  military 
skill,  and  that  Von  Moltke,  the  great  strate- 
gist, declares  it  to  be  without  a  rival  in  the 
world's  history." 


Lee's  splendid  defence  against  Grant  is 
belittled  in  the  same  unworthy  spirit.  The 
great  Virginian  foresaw  and  thwarted  every 
device  of  his  antagonist.  During  the  first 
few  weeks  of  that  fearful  campaign  he  in- 
flicted on  Grant  a  loss  greater  than  the 
numbers  of  his  own  army.  With  a  skill 
and  vigilance  and  devotion  unparalleled  in 
human  annals  he  held  his  constantly- 
lengthening  line  until  it  broke  from  sheer 
attenuation  before  the  ever-swelling  myriads 


106        ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY. 

who  assailed  it.  And  yet  this  superb  de- 
fence, which  would  outweigh  a  score  of 
victories  won  on  equal  terms,  is  derided  as 
a  mere  blind  struggle,  in  which  "  the  dense 
forests  forbade  all  strategy." 

And  now  steadily,  relentlessly,  the  bitter 
conflict  draws  to  its  close,  and  this  teachable 
history  can  scarcely  hide  its  glee.  "  Food 
failed  them."  *  *  "If  they  sought  a 
moment's  repose  they  were  awakened  by 
the  clatter  of  pursuing  cavalry.  Lee,  like  a 
hunted  fox,  turned  hither  and  thither,"  but 
Sheridan  closed  in  upon  him. 

Is  it  thus  that  future  ages  will  contem- 
plate the  closing  act  of  that  mighty  drama? 
Will  no  apter  figure  be  found  than  that  of 
a  vile  earth-fox  to  symbolize  this  Heaven- 
born  leader  of  men  ?  The  comparison  comes 
natural  enough  to  this  author,  and  it  har- 
monizes with  the  animus  of  all  his  work. 
The  "Secessionist,"  the  "plunderer,"  the 
"invader,"  the  "insurrectionist,"  is  driven 


ON  "TEACHABLE"  HISTORY.          107 

to  earth  at  last,  and  the  writer  cannot  sup- 
press an  inward  chuckle. 

Shame  on  those  who  write  such  books ; 
and  triple  shame  on  those  who  foist  them 
upon  their  innocent  children!  It  may  be 
that  the  power  is  not  in  us  to  withstand 
the  trend  of  the  times.  And  yet  we  do 
know  that  in  the  coming  years,  when,  in 
her  own  high  atmosphere,  the  Muse  of  His- 
tory shall  depict  the  central  figure  of  our 
fallen  cause, — it  will  not  be  in  the  similitude 
of  a  prowling  fox — predatory  in  life  and 
abject  in  death — but  rather  will  there  arise 
before  us,  serene  in  native  majesty,  the 
august  and  pathetic  image  of  a  noble  spirit, 
tried  by  every  extremity  of  fortune,  yet 
faithful  to  the  end.  The  image  of 

"A  great  man  struggling  'mid  the  storms  of  fate, 
And  greatly  falling  with  a  falling  State." 


ON    THE    OUTWORN    THEORY    OF 
GOVERNMENT  BY  CONSENT. 


AN  ADDRESS. 


On  the  llth  of  March,  1898,  the  Department  of  the 
Solid  South  presented  to  the  Confederate  Museum  % 
portrait  of  President  Jefferson  Davis,  on  which  occasion 
Colonel  Cussons  made  the  following  presentation  address : 


ON  THE  OUTWORN  THEORY  OF 
GOVERNMENT  BY  CONSENT. 


*  *  *  *  *  * 

Promptly  at  the  appointed  hour  Colonel 
John  Cussons  entered  the  room,  and  Hon. 
D.  C.  Richardson  introduced  the  distin- 
guished soldier,  who,  he  said,  "  on  behalf  of 
the  Solid-South  Room,  will  present  to  the 
Confederate  Museum  a  portrait  of  Jefferson 
Davis,  President  of  the  Confederate  States 
of  America." 

COLONEL   CUSSONS'   ADDRESS. 

Colonel  Cussons,  as  soon  as  the  applause 
subsided,  said: 


114       ON  THE  OUTWORN  THEORY  OF 

Friends,  Comrades,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : 

On  the  llth  day  of  March,  1881— thirty- 
seven  years  ago  to-day — a  nation  was  born. 
Calmly,  unobtrusively,  majestically,  it  came 
into  being  by  virtue  of  the  unconstrained 
political  association  of  seven  sovereign 
States  which  had  withdrawn  their  adhesion 
from  the  Federal  Union.  At  that  time  no 
publicist  of  note  denied  or  doubted  the 
absolute  right  of  those  sovereign  powers  to 
thus  exercise  their  vital  function  of  sover- 
eignty. 

On  that  fateful  day  I  sat  on  the  portico 
of  the  State  Capitol  at  Montgomery,  and 
noted  the  sedate  yet  earnest  faces  of  that 
magnificent  assemblage  of  gentlemen  who 
had  been  delegated  by  their  several  States 
to  adopt  a  Confederate  constitution. 

Thoro  was  no  bravado  there ;  no  spirit  of 
wanton  defiance,  either  in  word  or  act. 
Their  deliberations  were  marked  by  a  grave 


GOVEKNMENT  BY  CONSENT.      115 

and  temperate  earnestness,  by  a  realizing 
sense  of  the  momentous  occasion  which  had 
called  them  together.  They  met  the  demand 
of  the  hour  with  the  patient  diligence,  the 
steadfast  and  serene  fortitude  of  their  race. 

And  I  said: 

If  the  Lincoln  goverment  shall  attempt  to 
despoil  these  people  of  their  inherited  right 
to  govern  themselves  by  lawful  methods,  in 
their  own  way,  then  must  there  come  a  con- 
flict which  will  not  cease  while  the  power 
of  resistance  remains — a  conflict  which  will 
either  vindicate  for  ages  yet  to  come  the 
great  American  principle  of  a  people's  God- 
given  right  to  self-government;  or  else  that 
principle,  wounded  in  the  house  of  its 
friends,  will  become  a  by-word  and  a 
mockery  throughout  all  lands,  and  to  the 
remotest  times. 

Four  years  later,  the  drift  of  events  had 
borne  me  again  to  the  banks  of  that  same 


116       ON  THE  OUTWORN  THEORY  OF 

river,  and  I  made  my  lonely  camp  with  a 
little  remnant  of  Forrest's  gallant  men. 
But  there  remained  in  all  that  region  no 
trace  of  any  familiar  thing.  The  nation 
had  perished.  Four  years  of  mortal  strife, 
of  immortal  glory,  of  unfading  renown. 
Four  years  of  fortune's  fickle  moods,  her 
smiles  and  frowns — of  hopes  and  memories, 
and  blinding  tears,  and  sorrows  which  would 
not  be  assuaged.  The  nation  had  perished. 
Her  armies,  worn  and  wasted  by  victories, 
were  reduced  to  fragments  which  could  no 
longer  form  a  battle  line.  Her  opulent  cities 
were  a  waste.  The  flower  of  her  youth, 
the  glory  of  her  manhood,  had  passed  away ; 
on  wind-swept  plains  and  in  pathless  for- 
ests, a  little  mound  of  nameless  dust  their 
only  sepulchre.  Every  household  in  mourn- 
ing— every  home  in  all  the  land  forlorn  and 
desolate. 

Yet  are   those   heroes   not  forgotten,  nor 
shall   they   be   while   patriotism    is  honored 


GOVERNMENT  BY  CONSENT.         117 

among  men,  or  unavailing  sacrifice  can  claim 
the  tribute  of  a  tear. 

"They  fell  devoted,  yet  undying; 
Their  names  the  very  winds  are  sighing; 
The  lonely  column,  cold  and  gray, 
Claims  kindred  with  their  sacred  clay. 
Their  spirits  haunt  the  dusky  mountains; 
Their  memory  sparkles  in  ihe  fountains; 
The  tiniest  rill,  the  mightiest  river, 
Rolls  mingled  with  their  fame  forever." 

The  history  of  those  eventful  days  is  the 
history  of  the  illustrious  personage  whose 
portrait  the  Department  of  the  Solid  South 
now  presents  to  the  Confederate  Museum. 

As  the  chief  of  a  fallen  cause,  Jefferson 
Davis  must  bear  for  a  season  that  burden 
which  the  Fates  ordain  for  those  who  sink 
beneath  their  frown. 

It  is  easy  for  the  time-server  to  say  that 
our  leader  should  have  surrendered  when 
he  saw  that  the  trend  of  events  was  against 
us.  But  we  must  remember  that  to  his 
steadfast  and  heroic  soul  there  was  no 


118       ON  THE  OUTWORN  THEORY  OF 

middle  ground  between  right  and  wrong. 
He  stood  for  the  liberties  of  his  country- 
men— for  those  rights  which  men  of  our 
race  must  have  or  perish  in  the  attempt  to 
attain  them! 

And  even  if  the  Invader  had  asked  the 
terms  on  which  our  chief  would  cease  re- 
sistance, the  spirit  of  his  reply  could  have 
been  only  that  which  old  Cato  sent  to  all- 
conquering  Cassar: 

"  Bid  him  disband  his  legions, 
Restore  the  Commonwealth  to  liberty  ; 
Submit  his  actions  to  the  public  censure, 
And  stand  the  judgment  of  a  free-born  people." 

Jefferson  Davis  knew,  as  none  else  knew, 
the  real  nature  and  magnitude  of  the  crisis 
which  the  South  had  to  confront. 

He  was  dealing  with  a  revolutionary 
faction  which  was  not  amenable  to  the 
ordinary  dictates  of  reason  and  of  right — a 
faction  which  had  denounced  the  Union, 
and  reviled  the  Constitution,  and  aspersed 


GOVERNMENT  BY  CONSENT.          119 


the  courts,  and  villified  the  nation's  flag- 
faction  which  mistook  its  passions  for  its 
conscience,  and  its  freakish  fancies  for  abid- 
ing principles — a  faction  which  answered 
the  patriotic  appeal  for  Constitution  and 
Union  with  the  revolutionary  counter-cry 
of  "  The  Union  as  it  is,  and  the  Constitution 
as  it  ought  to  be" — a  faction  which  no 
compact  could  bind,  which  no  obligation 
could  restrain — a  faction  which  stigmatized 
the  Southern  States  as  an  incubus  and  a 
reproach,  and  declared  that  "they  could  not 
be  kicked  out  of  the  Union " — a  faction 
which  dedicated  itself  to  the  cause  of  "  equal 
rights,"  and  poured  out  all  the  fervor  of 
its  soul  in  the  inspiring  phrase,  "  We  hav'nt 
got  any  niggers,  and  we  don't  mean  that 
you  shall  have  any"* — a  faction  which 

*  Their  lineal  descendants,  except  such  as  have  en- 
riched themselves  by  plunder,  are  still  uttering  the 
same  cry,  merely  substituting  the  word  "dollars"  for 
"  negroes." 


120       ON  THE  OUTWORN  THEORY  OF 

resisted  the  plea  for  peace  by  savagely 
declaring  that  "the  Union  would  be  im- 
proved by  a  little  blood-letting" — a  faction 
which  started  its  choicest  chapter  with 
professions  of  the  loftiest  benevolence,  and 
closed  it  with  that  nightmare  of  horrors,  the 
witches'  dance  of  reconstruction — a  faction 
which  inaugurated  its  reign  of  peace  by 
instituting  terrors  more  terrible  than  the 
terrors  of  war;  which  overthrew  courts  and 
constitutions,  and  set  up  military  satrapies 
on  the  ruins  of  Sovereign  States — a  faction 
which  disfranchised  every  Southerner  of 
established  character,  and  made  the  owner- 
ship of  property  a  crime;  which  called  to 
the  front  of  civil  power  a  servile  race ;  a 
race  which  had  had  nothing  but  its  brief 
tutelage  of  slavery  to  uplift  it  from  the  bar- 
barism in  which  it  had  groped  since  the 
creation  of  the  world — a  faction  which 
united  every  phase  of  folly  in  its  theories 
with  every  form  of  atrocity  in  its  practice ; 


GOVEKNMENT  BY  CONSENT.      121 

which  instilled  into  the  Negro  heart  the 
vile  doctrine  of  "miscegenation,"  and  thus 
planted  the  seeds  of  an  evil  which  now 
overshadows  the  land — a  faction  which  daffed 
aside  all  laws,  human  or  divine,  and  called 
for  a  new  Bible  and  a  new  God — a  faction 
which  had  launched  against  the  South  the 
most  ferocious  and  the  most  fearless  of  its 
fanatical  freebooters,  a  man  of  iron  nerve 
and  bloody  hand,  who  became  at  last  their 
chosen  divinity,  and  whose  name  and  fame 
united  to  inspire  the  battle-song  of  their 
marauding  armies.  No  graver  crisis  ever 
confronted  a  liberty-loving  and  law-abiding 
people. 

Jefferson  Davis's  European  critics  hold 
that  he  should  have  availed  himself  of  the 
tremendous  power  which  autocracy  gives  to 
war;  that  when  the  Lincoln  Government 
resorted  to  despotic  measures  he  also  should 
have  met  force  with  force.  But  those 
critics  forget  that  the  South's  struggle  was 
solely  for  constitutional  freedom,  for  civil 


122       ON  THE  OUTWORN  THEORY  or 

privileges  and  social  order,  for  liberty  linked 
with  law. 

The  whole  story  of  the  war  and  its 
causes  has  been  distorted  and  perverted 
and  falsely  told.  Yet  at  the  bar  of  unbiased 
history,  before  the  tribunal  of  impartial  pos- 
terity, it  will  become  manifest  that  the  vital 
principle  of  self-government — the  world's 
ideal,  and  what  was  fondly  deemed  Amer- 
ica's realization  of  that  ideal — went  down 
in  blood  and  tears  on  the  stricken  field  of 
Appomattox.  It  was  there  that  Statehood 
perished.  It  was  there  that  the  last  stand 
was  made  for  the  once-sacred  principle  of 
"government  by  free  consent." 

The  present  order  of  things  will  go  on. 
The  nation  will  gather  strength  and  pres- 
tige and  immunity,  and  power  to  repress 
and  command,  but  never  again  will  it  be 
the  government  which  the  fathers  ordained. 
Popular  in  its  forms  doubtless  it  will  long 
remain,  yet  in  essence  it  will  be  imperial — 
a  vast  and  opulent  yet  virtually  irresponsi- 


GOVEKNMENT   BY   CONSENT.  123 

ble  oligarchy,  uniting  Grecian  culture  and 
British  strength  with  something  perhaps  of 
Roman  pomp  and  more  than  Persian  mag- 
nificence. 

The  old  simplicity  and  the  old  integrity 
of  the  republic  have  passed  away.  The 
ancient  temple  of  our  liberties  rested  on 
many  pillars,  and  thence  derived  its  safest 
strength.  But  those  stately  pillars — their 
sovereign  virtue  gone — have  become  but  as 
the  slime  into  which  they  sank;  and  thence 
has  emerged  the  nondescript  which  we  now 
behold — this  thing  of  shreds  and  patches — 
this  mock  of  sovereign  states — this  federa- 
tion of  political  nonentities  which  no  two 
statists  in  the  land  can  agree  upon,  or 
define  alike. 

Potential  classes  are  now  longing  for  a 
change;  they  are  earnest  in  their  desire  for 
what  they  call  "a  strong  government." 
And  it  may  be  that  their  yearnings  will  not 
be  in  vain.  The  corruption  of  a  republic 
is  the  germination  of  an  empire.  A  period 


124       ON  THE  OUTWORN  THEORY  OF 

of  domestic  turbulence  or  foreign  war  would 
render  usurpation  as  easy  as  the  repetition 
of  a  thrice-told  tale.  Political  speculations 
would  then  reassume  their  old  names — in- 
civism,  sedition,  constructive  treason — and 
the  familiar  remedies  would  be  applied — 
press  censorship,  the  star  chamber,  lettres- 
de-cachet,  and  bureaus  of  military  justice. 

What  the  gain  would  be,  or  what  the  loss, 
I  do  not  ask.  I  merely  point  to  that  grand 
figure,  who,  through  battle-storm  and  civic 
tempest,  stood  staunchly  at  the  helm,  and, 
with  the  well-worn  chart  before  him,  held 
the  prow  toward  her  ancient  moorings,  as 
constantly,  as  unfalteringly,  as  over  midnight 
billows  the  needle  tracks  the  polar  star. 

The  ship  of  state  is  staunch  enough. 
Her  timbers  are  sound,  and  her  crew  is 
sturdy  and  brave.  But  the  old  chart  was 
shrivelled  up  by  the  fierce  fires  of  war,  and 
the  old  landmarks  have  been  swept  away. 
The  wide  sea  is  before  us  now,  and  we  are 
drifting;  but  let  us,  at  least,  drift  in  good 


GOVERNMENT  BY  CONSENT.          125 

hope.  The  sky  is  sprinkled  thick  with 
gleaming  gems,  and  in  the  hazard  of  cnoos- 
ing  our  beacon  let  us  earnestly  pray  that 
we  may  not  follow  "all  stars  of  Heaven 
except  the  guiding  one." 

The  fame  of  our  dead  chief  is  with  the 
ages  and  the  nations.  At  a  tempestuous 
period  in  our  history  he  encountered  the 
fell  forces  of  blind  intolerance  and  fanatic 
hate,  and  was  crushed  beneath  their  tread. 
Yet  his  name  and  memory  will  live,  and 
be  honored  of  men,  when  every  memorial 
of  those  who  overwhelmed  him  shall  have 
crumbled  into  indistinguishable  dust. 

"  For  graves  like  his  are  pilgrim  shrines, 

Shrines  to  no  creed  or  code  confined — 
The  Delphic  Vales,  the  Palestines, 
The  Meccas  of  the  mind." 

Permit  me,  Governor  O'Ferrall,  in  behalf 
of  the  Solid  South,  to  present  to  the  Con- 
federate Museum  the  portrait  of  our  beloved 
and  honored  chief,  President  Jefferson  Davis. 


ON  GRANTING  FORGIVENESS  BEFORE 
IT  IS  ASKED. 


REPLY  TO  A  LETTER 

On  the  subject  of  inviting  the  Grand  Army  of  the 

Republic  to  become  the  Guests  of  the 

Confederate  Capital. 


IS  IT  TO  BE  DESIRED? 


COLONEL  CU3SONS  ON  THE  PROPOSED  COMING 
OF  THE  GRAND  ARMY  OF  THE  REPUBLIC. 


"  The  following  letter  has  been  received  by  a  gentle- 
man of  this  city  (Richmond,  Va.)  from  Colonel  John 
Cussons,  Grand  Commander  of  the  Grand  Camp  of 
Virginia  Confederate  Veterans :" 

GLEN  ALLEN,  VA.,  August  4,  1897. 

WILLIAM  C.  PRESTON,  ESQ., 

Richmond,  Va. ; 

MY  DEAR  SIR, — I  have  read  with  deep 
interest  your  letter  of  yesterday,  and  need 
not  say  how  sedulously  we  should  avoid 
any  act  or  utterance  which  might  possibly 


132        ON  GRANTING  FORGIVENESS 

engender  friction  between  the  departing  and 
the  on-coming  generations  of  our  people. 

Old  Confederates  dwell  naturally  in  the 
past,  nursing  the  memory  of  the  great  days 
which  are  gone — days  rich  in  promise  and 
in  achieved  renown — days  dark  with  the 
gloom  of  defeat,  filled  with  abiding  sorrow, 
yet  never  until  now  threatened  with  the 
taint  of  shame. 

Meantime  our  young  men  lift  their  eager 
gaze  to  the  future,  and  are  impatient  of  all 
that  may  seem  to  check  or  hinder  their 
career.  I  sympathize  with  them.  I  wish 
them  God-speed.  They  are  the  best  depend- 
ence of  Virginia,  and  in  every  fibre  of  my 
being  I  thrill  with  their  energy  and  gather 
inspiration  from  their  hope. 

But  is  this  meeting  of  the  Grand  Army 
of  the  Republic  a  thing  to  be  desired  by 
the  people  of  your  city?  Would  your  Con- 
federate Camps  be  likely  to  forget  their 
many  repulses  and  cordially  fraternize  with 


BEFOBE  IT  is  ASKED.  133 

these  visitors?  Would  they  entertain  them 
with  that  free  and  effusive  hospitality  which 
has  so  long  marked  their  treatment  of  the 
stranger  within  their  gates?  And  failing 
this,  even  in  slight  degree,  would  not  the 
day  of  healing  be  pushed  further  back? 

As  a  separate  proposition,  perhaps  noth- 
ing would  be  more  instructive  or  more 
salutary  than  a  close  intermingling  of  our 
Southern  youth  with  the  men  of  the  Grand 
Army.  For  the  illusion  which  Northern 
literature  has  been  fostering  among  our 
young  people  would  be  rather  rudely  dissi- 
pated when  a  mixed  assemblage  of  these 
gentlemen  should  begin  to  regale  you  with 
their  camp  songs  on  "Marching  Through 
Georgia,"  and  the  "  Sour  Apple  Tree,"  and 
"Sheridan's  Ride  in  the  Valley."  And  to 
be  less  than  prepared  for  this,  would  im- 
pose a  restraint  upon  your  guests  which 
would  rob  their  reunion  of  one  of  its  strik- 
ing characteristics. 

As    the    Capital  of   the    Confederacy — as 


134         ON  GRANTING  FORGIVENESS 

a  city  which  withstood  their  beleaguering 
armies  for  four  immortal  years — Richmond 
would  naturally  be  an  object  of  interest  to 
its  captors,  and  I  doubt  not  that  these 
gentlemen  would  accept  your  invitation  pro- 
vided you  could  guarantee  to  them  the 
customary  fifty  thousand  dollars  which  they 
require  for  their  entertainment. 

But  would  it  be  well  to  thus  utilize  the 
memorials  of  a  sorrowful  and  sacred  past 
in  the  interests  of  a  spectacle  and  a  show  ? 
Would  not  the  day  of  jubilee  be  a  day  of 
mourning  to  some  of  your  noblest  and  most 
devoted  people?  Does  not  the  historic 
fame  of  your  fair  city  impose  a  class  of 
obligations  which  you  can  not  altogether 
disregard?  And  in  any  case  would  it  not 
seem  a  little  premature,  and  possibly  in 
doubtful  taste,  to  put  yourselves  in  the 
position  of  proffering  a  forgiveness  which 
has  not  been  asked,  and  which  might  not 
even  be  desired? 

In    this    connection    I    would    recall  the 


BEFORE  IT  is  ASKED.  135 

sentiments  expressed  some  three  years  ago 
by  a  well-informed  and  patriotic  Northerner. 
He  said,  in  effect: 

"  If  there  is  a  more  hopeless  man  than  he  who  can 
neither  forgive  nor  forget  it  is  the  '  chronic  reconciler ' 
who  improves  every  opportunity  to  haul  out  his  faded 
olive  branch  and  wave  it  in  the  eyes  of  the  people. 

"The  growth  of  reconciliation  between  the  North  and 
the  South  is  the  slow  growth  of  years,  and  the  work 
of  generations.  When  any  man,  North  or  South,  in  a 
public  place  takes  occasion  to  talk  in  a  mellow  and 
mawkish  way  of  the  great  love  he  now  has  for  his  old 
enemy,  watch  him.  He  is  getting  ready  to  ask  for 
something.  There  is  a  fine  poetic  idea  in  the  reunion 
of  two  contending  and  shattered  elements  of  a  great 
nation.  There  is  something  beautifully  pathetic  in  the 
picture  of  the  North  and  the  South  clasped  in  each 
other's  arms  and  shedding  a  torrent  of  hot  tears  down 
each  other's  backs  as  it  is  done  in  a  play.  But  do 
you  believe  that  the  aged  mothers  on  either  side  have 
learned  to  love  the  foe  with  much  violence  yet?  Do 
you  believe  that  the  crippled  veteran,  North  or  South, 
now  passionately  loves  the  adversary  who  robbed  him 
of  his  glorious  youth,  made  him  a  feeble  ruin,  and 


136        ON  GRANTING  FORGIVENESS 

mowed  down  his  comrades  with  swift  death?  Do  you 
believe  that  either  warrior  is  so  fickle  that  he  has  en- 
tirely deserted  the  cause  for  which  he  fought?  Even 
the  victor  cannot  ask  that. 

"  Let  the  gentle  finger  of  time  undo,  so  far  as  may 
be,  the  devastation  wrought  by  the  war,  and  let  suc- 
ceeding generations  seek  by  natural  methods  to  reunite 
the  business  and  the  traffic  which  were  interrupted  by 
the  conflict. 

"  Two  warring  parents  on  the  verge  of  divorce  have 
been  saved  the  disgrace  of  separation  and  have  agreed 
to  maintain  their  household  for  the  sake  of  their  chil- 
dren. Their  love  has  been  questioned  by  the  world, 
and  their  relations  strained.  Is  it  not  bad  taste  for 
them  to  pose  in  public  and  make  a  cheap  Romeo  and 
Juliet  tableau  of  themselves? 

"  Let  time  and  merciful  silence  obliterate  the  scars 
of  war,  and  succeeding  generations,  fostered  by  the 
smiles  of  natural  prosperity  soften  the  bitterness  of  the 
past  and  mellow  the  memory  of  a  mighty  struggle  in 
which  each  contending  host  called  upon  Almighty  God 
to  sustain  the  cause  which  it  honestly  believed  to  be 
just. 

"  Let  us  be  contented  during  this  generation  with 
the  assurance  that  geographically  the  Union  has  been 


BEFORE  IT  is  ASKED.  137 

restored,  and  that  each  contending  warrior  has  taken 
up  the  peaceful  struggle  for  bettering  and  beautifying 
the  home  so  bravely  fought  for."  * 

And  let  us  not  forget  that  to  demand 
more  than  this,  is  to  put  in  peril  all  that 
has  been  attained. 

I  fully  join  with  you  in  the  opinion  that 
for  Richmond  or  any  other  Southern  city 
to  assume  the  relation  of  host  to  an  organi- 
zation which  is  partly  composed  of  negroes 
would  at  this  time  be  peculiarly  unfitting, 
and  I  sincerely  hope  that  some  other 
method  may  be  devised  for  the  advance- 
ment of  Richmond's  welfare. 

With  kindest  regards,  I  am, 

My  dear  Mr.  Preston, 

Sincerely  yours, 

JOHN  CUSSONS. 

*  Nye'i  Hist.  U.  S. 


ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF  THE 
AMERICAN  INDIAN. 


[From  the  Richmond  (Va.)  Dispatch.] 

COL.  CUSSONS  DEFENDS  THE  INDIAN. 


HIS  STBIKING  ADDRESS  BEFORE  THE 
WOMAN'S  CLUB. 


The  members  of  the  Woman's  Club  enjoyed  a  rare 
treat  on  Monday  evening  in  the  address  delivered  by 
Colonel  John  Cussons  on  the  Indian.  General  Dabney 
H.  Maury  also  made  a  bright  and  interesting  little 
speech  in  presenting  Colonel  Cussons,  who  did  not 
confine  himself  to  the  subject  announced  for  the  even- 
ing— "The  Indian  in  Literature  and  Legend" — but 
spoke  from  his  own  eiperience  in  defence  of  the  Red 
Man  against  the  charges — cruelty,  revengefulness,  and 
treachery.  The  gallant  ex-Confederate,  who  spent  years 
on  the  frontier,  spoke  with  great  earnestness  and  vigor, 
and  was  heard  with  close  attention  and  deep  interest. 

The  chairman  for  the  evening  was  Mrs.  J.  Arthur 
Lefroy,  who,  in  a  graceful  manner,  announced  the  speak- 
ers of  the  evening. 


142         ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

GENERAL  MAURT'S  SPEECH. 

General  Maury,  after  giving  a  witty 
illustration  of  his  inability  to  make  an 
extemporaneous  speech,  said: 

'Your  kindness  in  asking  me  to  tell  you 
about  the  North  American  Indians  embar- 
rasses me,  for  it  is  founded  upon  the  belief 
that  I  know  a  great  deal  about  those 
Indians,  whereas,  the  fact  is,  that  I  know 
only  what  is  bad  in  them,  and  it  will  be 
unfair  to  such  unfortunate  people  to  tell 
only  what  is  bad  in  their  nature.  I  share 
the  sentiments  of  all  men  of  the  United 
States  army  whose  official  life  has  been 
passed  in  dealing  with  these,  our  natural 
enemies.  For  three  hundred  years  we  have 
known  them  only  as  malefactors  of  the 
most  vengeful  and  cruel  nature.  We  have 
taken  from  them  their  country,  destroyed 
their  homes,  and  hunted  them  down  as 
beasts  of  prey.  After  generations  of  our 


THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  143 

people  have  been  born  and  lived  and  died 
in  this  antagonism,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the 
brutal  sentiment  of  one  of  the  most  ruth- 
less of  American  commanders  has  found 
expression  in  the  aphorism:  'There  is  no 
good  Indian  but  a  dead  Indian.' 

"As  my  observation  of  these  unhappy 
people  furnishes  no  exception  to  this 
verdict,  I  have  been  most  fortunate  in 
securing  for  your  instruction  this  evening 
a  gentleman  who  has  probably  observed 
and  studied  the  Indian  character  more 
thoroughly  than  any  man  now  living.  My 
function,  ladies,  is  to  introduce  to  you  our 
neighbor,  Colonel  John  Cussons,  who  was 
for  many  years  their  guest  and  comrade — 
fought  under  Joe  Johnston,  Lee,  and 
Forrest,  and,  after  all  his  long  experiences 
finally  decided  to  become  a  Virginian  and 
live  amongst  us.  Permit  me  to  introduce 
to  you  Colonel  John  Cussons,  of  Glen 
Allen,  Virginia. 


144         ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

ADDRESS  OF  COLOIJEL  CUSSONS. 

Colonel  Cussons  was  given  a  cordial 
reception.  He  said: 

I  was  very  glad,  ladies,  to  hear  General 
Maury's  rebuke  of  the  Sheridian  aphorism 
that  "there  is  no  good  Indian  but  a  dead 
Indian,"  yet  that  pleasure  was  changed  to 
surprise  when  he  qualified  his  censure  by 
directing  it,  not  at  the  sentiment  itself,  but 
rather  at  "the  ruthless  commander"  who 
uttered  it. 

The  phrase  is  an  effective  one.  It  has 
been  a  comfort  and  a  solace  to  us  amid 
deeds  which  required  palliation.  And  yet  I 
am  afraid  that  it  is  too  flexible,  too  general 
in  its  application,  to  be  accepted  as  a  per- 
fectly safe  guide.  As  a  recognized  principle 
in  casuistry  it  might  prove  awkward  under 
changed  conditions.  Like  Jeff  Thompson's 
mountain  howitzers  it  might  do  "great 
execution  on  the  wrong  side."  What,  for 


THE  AMEEICAN  INDIAN.  145 

instance,  if  the  Indian  were  to  reverse  the 
terms,  and  declare  that  "There  is  no  good 
Yankee  but  a  dead  Yankee?"  How  would 
the  sentiment  strike  us  then?  Should  we 
feel  that  the  phrase  had  settled  the  ethics 
of  the  case? — that  the  Indian  would  then 
be  free  to  make  "good  people"  of  us?  Or 
should  we  not  probably  change  our  views 
in  the  light  of  such  practice?  Might  we 
not  even  go  so  far  as  to  protest  against 
the  very  principle  itself? — the  principle  of 
setting  up  a  rather  sorry  epigram  as  a 
substitute  for  the  moral  law? 

And  now  I  want  to  ask  why  it  is  that  an 
illustrious  and  scholarly  soldier,  a  brilliant 
essayist  and  able  historian,  a  keen  observer, 
and  logical  reasoner  who  has  so  abundantly 
demonstrated  his  fitness  for  discerning  and 
depicting  the  life  and  character  of  one 
people,  should  so  completely  misinterpret 
the  leading  traits  and  characteristics  of 
another  people?  For  it  may  be  justly  said 

10 


146         ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

that  if  every  other  memorial  of  our  epic 
period  should  perish,  there  would  yet 
remain  to  us,  in  the  "Recollections  of  a 
Virginian,"  a  series  of  vivid  pictures  from 
which  might  be  deduced  the  very  form  and 
pressure  of  the  times.  How,  then,  is  it  that 
the  author  of  that  volume — a  volume  which 
the  philosophical  historian  of  the  future  will 
justly  regard  as  priceless — how  is  it  that  he 
who  has  painted  so  strikingly,  with  such 
felicity,  and  such  fidelity,  the  life  and  spirit 
of  the  white  American,  should  misread  so 
strangely  all  the  leading  idiosyncracies  of 
the  red  American? 

An  answer  to  this  question  would  be  a 
virtual  solution  of  the  most  vexed  feature 
of  the  Indian  problem.  And  perhaps  the 
easiest  way  to  get  a  general  grasp  of  the 
subject  will  be  by  running  a  few  parallels 
on  familiar  lines. 

It  is  evident  that  the  relation  which  the 
Indian  has  borne  to  the  white  man  on  this 


THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  147 

continent  resembles,  in  many  respects,  the 
relation  which  long  existed  between  the 
people  of  the  North  and  the  people  of  the 
South.  And  it  may  be  that,  in  the  image 
of  our  cause  we'll  see  the  portraiture  of  his. 

He  was  guilty,  like  ourselves,  of  possessing 
a  goodly  heritage,  and  was  imbued  with  a 
strong  desire  to  enjoy  his  own  inheritance 
in  his  own  way.  Like  ourselves,  he  was 
wedded  to  his  own  mode  of  life — the  life 
of  his  fathers — and  like  us,  he  asked  only 
to  be  let  alone.  Like  ourselves,  he  was 
first  wronged,  until  he  resisted,  and  then 
crushed  because  he  resisted.  And,  like 
ourselves,  only  in  a  greater  degree,  his  story 
has  ibeen  told  by  his  enemy,  and  by  his 
enemy  alone.  Like  ourselves,  in  the  pro- 
cess of  subjugation,  he  has  been  judged  by 
the  apostates  of  his  race ;  yet,  with  us,  the 
apostates  by  this  time  have  wellnigh  run 
their  course,  while  with  him  they  still  abide. 

If  we  recall  the  evil  days  of  Reconstruc- 


148         ON  THE  "TBEACHERY"  OF 

tion,  we  shall  have  before  us  the  conditions 
which  confront  the  Indian  still. 

Our  conquerors  were  inspired  with  a 
restless  zeal  to  bring  into  the  Union  fold 
all  the  lost  spirits  who  had  wandered  into 
the  desert  places  of  Secessia.  And  when 
they  had  found  such  paragons  of  loyalty  as 
Judge  Underwood,  or  reclaimed  such  tristful 
penitents  as  Brother  Hunnicut,  they  lifted 
up  their  voices  and  sang  triumphant  songs. 
Yet,  when  they  had  drawn  the  redeemed  to 
their  bosoms — when  they  began  to  catch 
the  real  flavor  of  their  converts — it  is  little 
wonder  that  they  marvelled  exceedingly, 
and  spake  unto  each  other  in  shuddering 
whispers,  saying:  "If  these  are  indeed  the 
ransomed  ones,  what  must  the  unregenerate 
be?" 

And  so,  for  a  season,  the  renegade  and 
the  traitor  and  every  creature  which  could 
crawl  and  writhe  and  betray  acted  after  his 
kind,  and  received  the  wages  of  his  apos- 


THE  AMEBICAN  INDIAN.  149 

tacy.  Yet  in  the  fulness  of  time  it  was 
seen  that  back  of  these  smooth  and  supra- 
loyal  proselytes  were  a  great  and  earnest 
people,  crushed  to  the  dust,  yet  rich  in 
every  quality  of  a  noble  manhood.  And  so 
the  hour  of  the  scalawag  passed  away,  and 
a  new  dawning  opened  upon  the  stricken 
South. 

But  with  the  Indian  there  was  no  change. 
The  apostate  continued  to  be  his  spokes- 
man to  the  end,  and  the  white  man  never 
realized  that  what  he  called  the  "friendly 
Indian "  was  always  a  traitor  to  his  own 
people ;  an  outcast,  a  sycophant,  a  hypocrite 
— in  one  word,  a  scalawag.  These  were  the 
creatures,  General,  who  appeared  to  army 
officers  as  the  representatives  of  their  race. 
It  was  these  whom  you  employed  as  guides 
and  scouts — the  Hunnicuts  of  their  tribes — 
false,  uncleanly  yahoos,  with  whom,  perhaps, 
you  would  have  to  ratify  solemn  treaties; 
wretches  who  would  sign  away  the  domain 


150         ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

of  their  people  or  commit  any  other  infamy 
for  a  canteen  of  rum.  Such  were  the 
"  friendly "  members  of  every  independent 
or  hostile  tribe  which  ranged  the  plains  in 
the  old  days  which  preceded  their  impris- 
onment on  the  reservations. 

But  glance  down  the  shadowy  past,  and 
summon  the  free-born  Lacotah  of  forty 
years  ago — the  indigenous  native  American, 
whom  we  have  so  wantonly  destroyed. 
Look  at  him  !  Lithe,  sinewy,  strong,  hand- 
some in  form,  and  in  movement  graceful  as 
the  leopard.  Constant  in  his  friendships, 
faithful  to  his  people,  crowned  with  the 
majesty  which  can  dwell  only  where  free- 
dom is — a  kingly  bearing,  tempered  by  that 
gracious  courtesy  which  springs  from  a 
union  of  kindly  feeling  with  conscious 
strength — these  were  the  qualities  which 
marked  him  while  he  remained  untouched 
by  our  higher  civilization.  A  savage  he 
may  have  been — wild,  unlettered,  impatient 


THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  151 

of  restraint — yet  he  had  a  devotion  and  a 
kindliness  which  were  all  his  own ;  and  I  am 
not  ashamed  to  say  that  I  have  met  but 
few  men  who  have  more  deeply  impressed 
me  with  a  sense  of  full  manhood  than  the 
typical  Lacotah  warrior.  It  may  be  social 
treason  to  avow  it,  yet  I  have  seen  Robert 
E.  Lee,  both  in  bivouac  and  battle,  when 
he  has  brought  vividly  to  my  mind  the 
image  of  Matto-Num-Pa,  a  war  chief  of  the 
Lacotah  s. 

These  people  were  largely  what  their  free 
life  made  them;  a  life  of  activity,  often 
of  hardship,  never  of  routine  toil.  They 
drank  in  the  fresh  air  of  the  desert,  and 
all  their  physical  surroundings  were  whole- 
some and  pure.  Their  tribal  fealty,  their 
bond  of  brotherhood,  was  strengthened  and 
close-knit  by  the  presence  of  formidable 
enemies — Pawnees  on  the  South,  Utes  on 
the  west,  and  the  white  man  steadily 
encroaching  on  their  eastern  border. 


152         ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

There  were  all  the  conditions  among  them 
of  a  full,  material  life;  in  some  of  its 
aspects  fuller,  and  in  most  of  its  phases  not 
less  full  than  our  own.  No  need  of  elabo- 
rate commerce  or  of  manufactures.  Their 
simple  industry  commanded  the  fruits  which 
those  activities  yield.  The  buffalo  was  to 
them  all,  and  more  than  all,  that  the 
reindeer  is  to  the  Laplander.  It  furnished 
them  with  food  and  clothing,  with  thread 
and  cordage,  with  the  lariat,  the  pishmore, 
and  the  lodge  in  which  they  dwelt.  The 
pony  represented  almost  universal  uses.  It 
was  indispensable  for  war;  indispensable  for 
the  chase.  It  was  their  measure  of  value, 
their  medium  of  exchange.  It  stood  for 
dowry,  treaty,  entertainment,  currency,  and 
transportation.  Of  the  arts  and  sciences 
their  knowledge  was  about  equal  to  their 
needs.  In  jurisprudence  they  had  the  ad- 
vantage of  us,  chiefly  in  this,  that  their 
laws  were  intelligible — even  to  those  who 


THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  153 

studied  them.  They  didn't  worry  themselves 
about  tariffs,  or  fritter  their  lives  away  in 
trying  to  find  out  whether  it  was  the  pro- 
ducer or  the  consumer  who  paid  the  tax. 
They  spent  no  strength  on  questions  of 
bimetallism  or  monometallism.  As  I  said, 
their  currency  was  the  pony,  and  they 
didn't  care  whether  in  was  white  or  yellow, 
or  even  piebald,  provided  it  would  go. 

But  it  is  said  that  they  are  cruel,  heart- 
less, destitute  of  all  emotion.  Let  us  see. 
And  let  us  not  forget  that  the  most  ruthless 
cruelty  is  that  which  betrays  through  the 
affections. 

I  recall  an  incident  which  will  illustrate 
my  meaning. 

Plainsmen  of  forty  years  ago  will  remember 
the  old  Frenchman,  Provo,  who  had  a  ranch 
on  the  North  Platte.  He  married  an  Oga- 
lalla  woman,  and  had  the  reputation  of 
being  the  poorest  shot  in  the  country, 
although  otherwise  he  was  accounted  a 


154         ON  THE  " TREACHERY"  OF 

decent  sort  of  a  man.  One  day  he  picked 
up  an  antelope  fawn  and  tethered  it  in  a 
copse  of  willows  about  a  mile  from  his 
lodge,  and  then  went  after  his  old  Hawkins 
rifle,  his  idea  being  that  the  bleating  of  the 
fawn  would  attract  the  doe,  and  thus  give 
him  a  pot  shot.  His  squaw,  suspecting 
what  was  going  on,  started  for  the  river 
bottom  on  a  dead  run,  and  I  cantered  over 
to  see  what  would  happen.  Wau-seech-ee 
Hung-Coo  was  a  picture  of  rage  and  morti- 
fication. She  seized  his  rifle  and  flung  it 
in  the  slough,  and  then  liberating  the  little 
fawn,  and  flipping  her  fingers  at  Provo,  she 
stalked  back  towards  the  ranch,  an  embody- 
ment  of  silent  scorn.  But  soon  she  broke 
down,  and  signaling  me  to  her  side,  she 
begged  that  I  would  forget  the  incident  and 
never  mention  it  to  their  children. 

That  "heathen  women,"  General  Maury, 
had  never  learned  from  us  either  the 
teachings  or  the  deeds  of  mercy.  No  white 


THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  T55 

man's  lips  had  ever  interpreted  to  her  the 
divine  injunction,  "Thou  shalt  not  seethe 
the  kid  in  the  mother's  milk." 

And  now  a  word  as  to  the  revengeful 
character  of  these  people.  I  think  it  is  Mr. 
Blackstone  who  defines  revenge  as  "a  wild 
kind  of  justice."  And  with  the  Lacotahs, 
fair  and  equal  reprisal  certainly  carried  the 
sense  of  salutary  and  natural  justice.  It 
ranked  with  their  highest  virtues,  and  ac- 
companied them — honor,  courage,  truth, 
self-devotion,  fortitude,  unshaken  constancy. 

We  must  remember  that  men  may  be 
beneath  revenge,  as  well  as  above  it.  It  is 
always  easier  to  suffer  a  wrong  than  to 
redress  it;  it  may  or  it  may  not  be  nobler. 
But  it  is  at  least  certain  that  he  who  is 
swiftest  in  forgiving  his  enemies  may 
be  equally  swift  in  forgetting  his  friends. 
Revenge  relates  to  a  personal  wrong;  justice 
to  a  public  one.  The  injury  which  the 
Lacotah  chiefly  resented  was  not  that  which 


156         ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

was  done  to  himself,  but  to  his  tribe.  It 
was  not  revenge,  but  simple  justice. 

But  how  about  their  treachery,  their 
subtlety,  their  craft,  their  ineradicable  deceit? 
That  is  supposed  to  have  been  their  crown- 
ing infamy.  It  was  that  which  made  it  our 
duty  to  blot  them  from  the  face  of  the 
earth.  Well,  take  a  few  familiar  examples. 
The  so-called  "Ouster  massacre,"  for  instance. 
It  was  simply  an  attempted  surprise  met  by 
a  counter-surprise.  Ouster  himself  delivered 
the  battle.  The  fight  was  in  open  field,  and 
the  numbers  nearly  equal.  The  Lacotahs 
simply  outgeneralled,  outmanoeuvred,  and 
outfought  their  adversaries.  The  only  spe- 
cific charge  ever  brought  against  them  was 
that  the  "treacherous  dogs"  had  armed 
themselves  with  rifles,  "just  like  our  own," 
when  everybody  knows  that  bows  and  arrows 
are  the  proper  weapons  for  Indians. 

The  success  of  Sitting  Bull's  strategy 
turned  on  the  chance  that  Ouster's  troops, 


THE  AMEBICAN  INDIAN.  157 

on  finding  what  appeared  to  be  an  unde- 
fended village,  would  make  a  reckless  dash 
at  it,  and  go  to  sabring  the  women  and 
children ;  in  which  case  an  ambuscade 
ought  not  only  to  repulse  their  headlong 
charge,  but  should  also  impair  their  disci- 
pline, and  break  their  ranks  to  such  an 
extent  that  they  might  be  scattered  and 
beaten  before  they  could  effect  a  rally. 

The  old  chief  knew  that  Ouster's  Pawnee 
scouts  had  made  a  midnight  reconnoissance 
of  the  village,  and  he  had  instructed  his 
outposts  not  to  molest  them.  He  then  pre- 
pared for  the  surprise  party.  Sending  the 
women  and  children  a  few  miles  up  the 
river,  he  supplied  their  places  with  a 
detachment  of  his  warriors,  ordering  them 
to  potter  around  the  campfires  and  imper- 
sonate old  women,  cuddling  little  bundles 
of  artificial  babies,  and  keeping  their  rifles 
well  hidden  beneath  their  blankets.  The 
moment  the  Long-Knives  should  come  in 


158          ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

sight  they  were  to  pick  up  the  bundles 
and  scuttle  off,  with  every  appearance  of 
terror,  toward  the  rising  ground,  where  a 
number  of  others  were  to  lie  in  ambush 
and  join  them  in  receiving  the  shock. 

Note  the  situation,  General,  and  let  the 
charge  of  cruelty  fall  where  it  properly 
belongs.  Sitting  Bull  risked  everything — his 
lodges,  his  ponies,  the  stored  wealth  of  his 
camp — on  the  single  chance  that  his  ene- 
mies would  throw  themselves  into  perilous 
disarray  when  afforded  an  opportunity  to 
gratify  what  he  deemed  their  innate 
savagery  and  sheer  lust  of  blood. 

Ouster  had  received  from  his  Pawnee 
scouts  a  full  description  of  the  situation,  and 
was  confident  of  a  great  victory.  And  so,  in 
swift  secrecy,  he  moved  toward  the  tranquil 
village  in  the  green  valley  of  the  Big  Horn. 
As  the  trail  led  down  to  the  ford,  he 
divided  his  forces,  so  that  none  of  the 
Indians  might  escape.  The  attacking  column, 


THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  159 

believing  itself  undiscovered,  got  very  near, 
and  then,  with  headlong  rush,  swept  to  its 
prey.  The  imitation  "  squaws "  fled  in 
simulated  terror  towards  the  hills.  The 
troopers  dashed  in  their  spurs!  No  longer 
riding  boot  to  boot,  but  every  horseman 
doing  his  best ! — every  sabre  swirling — every 
eye  gleaming — from  every  throat  an  exultant 
shout ! 

But  just  as  they  reached  their  intended 
victims  the  scene  changes.  With  a  swift 
movement,  the  "  squaws "  fling  off  their 
blankets,  while  all  around  them,  from  every 
turf  and  bush  and  rock,  springs  an  armed 
warrior!  The  tables  are  turned!  The  ranks 
of  death  confront  them !  A  gleam  of  painted 
faces,  grim  as  fate,  horrible  as  hell!  a  yell 
in  their  ears  hideous  as  the  blast  of  doom! 
the  tremulous  air  quivering  with  the  twang 
of  arrows  and  the  swirl  of  tomahawks  and 
the  flash  of  spears!  The  shock  has  appalled, 
dismayed,  unnerved  them!  Men  and  horses 


160         ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

crash  down  in  a  mass!  The  living  steeds, 
with  a  snort  of  terror,  recoil,  and  scatter 
over  the  plain.  Swift  pursuit  is  made. 
The  fugitives  reel  in  the  saddle  and  tumble, 
one  by  one,  clutching  the  empty  air.  A 
little  remnant  swims  the  river  and  joins 
the  main  body.  And  there,  on  Ouster's 
chosen  ground,  the  battle  is  fought  to  an 
end. 

And  then  a  cry  of  "Treachery"  rings 
through  all  this  land,  and  our  moral  sense 
demands  a  crusade  of  extermination! 

"Treachery!"  It  is  simply  the  interplay 
of  ambuscade — of  stroke  and  counterstroke 
— a  vital  element  in  the  strategy  of  war. 

But  if  this  be  indeed  treachery,  then  the 
most  treacherous  man  that  ever  planted  foot 
on  this  round  globe  was  Thomas  Jonathan 
Jackson — our  own  thrice-glorious  Stonewall. 
He  was  the  very  prince  and  potentate  of 
deceivers — the  quintessense  of  dissimulation. 

See    how    he     deceived    poor    Mr.    Pope 


THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  161 

during  the  three  days  and  nights  which  led 
up  to  the  Second  Battle  of  Manassas.  Why, 
he  told  that  confiding  general  the  most 
astounding  lie  that  has  ever  been  uttered 
in  the  universal  sign-language  of  war — a  lie 
sixty  miles  long!  A  tortuous,  twisting, 
twining  lie;  a  lie  which  worked  its  swift 
and  sinuous  course  far  up  the  south  bank 
of  the  Rappahannock — doubling  at  Salem 
and  White  Plains — gliding  across  Hazel 
river;  stealthily  creeping  behind  the  wall  of 
Bull  Run  mountains;  threading  that  range 
through  Thoroughfare  Gap,  and  then  in  the 
murk  of  midnight,  swooping  down  on 
Bristow  Station  and  Manassas  Junction,  and 
scattering  commissaries  and  quartermasters 
and  sutlers  in  a  way  that  commissaries  and 
quartermasters  and  sutlers  had  never  been 
scattered  before! 

There     he    is — receiving     railroad    trains 
freighted  with  fresh  supplies  from  Philadel- 
phia and  New  York — but  consigned  to  Mr. 
11 


162          ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

Pope.  All  the  riches  of  the  world  spread 
out  before  him — arms,  munitions,  blankets, 
shoes,  bacon,  flour,  hardtack,  coffee,  canned 
goods — everthing  that  a  soldier  needs,  world 
without  end! 

And  where  is  Mr.  Pope?  He's  out 
yonder  at  the  front  with  seventy  thousand 
men,  covering  the  line  of  the  Rappahannock 
from  Kelly's  Ford  to  Waterloo  bridge.  He 
had  made  his  appointment  to  meet  Jackson 
there;  and  Jackson  knew  it.  Pope  had 
announced  to  all  the  world  that  he  didn't 
believe  in  fooling  away  time  with  "  basis  of 
supply"  or  "lines  of  retreat."  Yet  see  how 
Jackson  deceived  him;  striking  him  in  the 
rear;  destroying  him;  so  twisting  him  up 
that  he  couldn't  identify  his  own  headquar- 
ters !  Were  Indians  ever  guilty  of  treachery 
more  gross  than  that? 

And  see  how  he  treated  Shields,  and 
Banks,  and  Hunter,  and  Milroy,  and  Fre- 
mont. He  was  everywhere  except  where 
those  generals  had  a  right  to  expect  him! 


THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  163 

Think  of  the  trick  he  played  on  McClellan. 
When  that  able  soldier  had  advanced  his 
parallels  to  the  very  walls  of  this  devoted 
city — just  as  the  mailed  hand  of  war  was 
being  stretched  forth  to  clutch  her — there 
was  sudden  tumult  yonder,  eight  miles 
away,  at  Cold  Harbor.  Staff  officers,  in  hot 
haste  were  dashing  to  McClellan' s  quarters, 
with  news  that  the  works  were  assailed; 
that  the  flank  was  turned;  that  the  rebels 
were  carrying  all  before  them!  Who 
stormed  those  ramparts?  Who  burst  those 
barriers  and  hewed  out  the  path  to  victory? 
It  was  that  arch  dissembler,  Stonewall  Jack- 
son. What  right  had  he  on  McClellan's 
flank,  when  McClellan  and  Lincoln  and 
Stanton,  and  all  the  world  believed  him  to 
be  beyond  the  Blue  Ridge  mountains  yon- 
der, playing  bo-peep  with  a  trio  of  generals 
who  were  reporting  two  or  three  times  a 
week  that  they  had  him  surrounded  at  last, 
and  would  bag  him  on  the  morrow  ?  Ah ! 


164          ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

he  was  fearfully  treacherous.  There  was  no 
dependence  to  be  placed  in  him — by  the 
Federal  commanders. 

What  was  his  conduct  toward  Hooker  at 
Chancellorsville?  Deceiving  that  General  by 
a  pretended  retreat,  he  stealthily  crept 
around  his  flank,  and  hurled  such  battle  on 
the  head  of  Fighting  Joe  as  has  no  parallel 
in  the  annals  of  war.  The  Eleventh  Corps 
(twenty  thousand  strong)  passed  from  his- 
tory on  that  fateful  day.  A  fateful  day, 
alas!  for  us,  too,  in  the  loss  of  that  single 
life.  But  his  fame  is  with  the  ages,  now; 
his  glory  is  the  heritage  of  our  race. 

Let  us  have  one  weight  and  one  measure. 
Let  us  be  ashamed  to  call  the  same  thing 
by  different  and  contradictory  names.  Let 
the  science  of  war,  and  its  highest  attribute, 
strategy,  have  the  same  name  and  the  same 
honor,  whether  exercised  by  the  white  man 
or  the  red  man.  We  see  how  incongruous 
is  the  charge  of  "  treachery,"  when  we  im- 


THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  165 

pute  it  to  that  stainless  soldier  whose  fame 
has  filled  the  world.  Why,  then,  should  we 
apply  the  dishonoring  word  to  a  Lacotah 
chief,  for  the  very  acts  and  deeds,  inspired 
by  the  self-same  motives,  which  filled  the 
heart  and  nerve^l  the  arm  of  Stonewall 
Jackson?  Both  alike  fought  for  hearth  and 
home,  for  ancient  right,  for  the  freedom 
which  they  had  inherited  from  their  fathers, 
for  the  freedom  which  they  were  bound,  by 
every  patriotic  or  tribal  bond,  to  transmit 
unimpaired  to  their  children. 

If  we  had  to  kill  those  people,  better  that 
we  had  done  it  with  open  hand,  like  the 
robbers  we  are,  than  stain  our  souls  by 
paltering  with  the  truth — imputing  to  them 
the  treachery  which  we  ourselves  have 
practiced. 

And  what  are  we  that  we  should  presume 
to  draw  an  impassable  line  between  our 
victims  and  ourselves? 

Were   not  our   own  ancestors  mere  sava- 


166          ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

ges,  but  lately  tamed?  When  civilization 
not  less  splendid  than  our  own  adorned  all 
the  coasts  of  the  Mediterranean — when 
learning,  and  arts,  and  philosophies  extended 
from  the  far  Orient  to  the  western  sea — 
were  not  our  fathers  naked  savages,  living 
in  caves  and  dens,  devouring  raw  flesh, 
fighting  for  wives,  and  measuring  strength 
with  wild  beasts?  Are  we  not  sprung  from 
the  loins  of  barbaric  Britain,  and  marauding 
Dane,  and  free-booting  Saxon?  Does  not 
the  fierce  blood  of  the  old  Norse  sea  kings 
flow  in  our  veins? — that  pirate  brood  who 
sailed  the  northern  coasts,  scattering  in  pale 
dismay  the  peaceful  peoples,  and  ravaging 
every  port  where  industry  had  made  a  foot- 
hold, or  commerce  had  established  a  mart? 
Are  we  not  proud  to  claim  descent  from 
the  Norman  robber,  meaguer  the  bar-sinister 
across  his  'scutcheon,  thus  conceding  that 
we  yield  our  homage  to  nothing  but  the 
mailed  hand  of  force? 


THE  AMEKICAN  INDIAN.  167 

Would  you  have  a  more  recent  example? 
Turn  back,  then,  for  the  brief  period  of 
three  human  lives,  and  you  see  a  kindred 
people  who  were  as  wild,  as  untamed,  as 
resentful  of  what  we  call  civilizing  influ- 
ences as  ever  were  the  Lacotahs  of  the 
western  plains.  Mark  the  dying  words  of 
the  typical  Scottish  Highlander,  when  he 
blessed  his  son  and  bade  him  remain  true 
to  the  traditions  of  his  fathers :  "  Plant  no 
tree ;  build  no  house ;  dig  not  the  soil. 
Keep  thy  refuge  in  the  mountains.  Spoil 
the  invader  who  crosses  thy  border.  Wear 
not  the  collar  of  the  stranger.  Be  true  to 
thy  clansmen,  and  live  the  free  life  which 
thy  fathers  lived." 

There  are  some  tribes,  some  peoples,  who 
can  pass  under  the  yoke;  who  can  accept 
a  master.  There  are  others  who  can  not — 
whose  necks  will  not  bend;  whose  souls 
can  not  yield.  There  must  be  time;  time, 
and  a  change  of  circumstance.  A  little. will 


168          ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

suffice — a  generation  or  two.  It  was  enough 
for  the  Scot;  it  might  have  been  enough 
for  the  Lacotah.  The  world  can  not  afford 
to  spill  that  adventurous,  that  unconquerable 
blood.  The  grandson  of  the  old  borderer 
has  thrown  aside  the  claymore,  and  to-day 
is  leading  the  van  of  progress  in  all  lands. 
To  the  Lacotah  we  gave  no  chance.  We 
hunted  him  for  our  sport  until  we  had 
lashed  him  into  fury,  and  then  turned  loose 
upon  him  all  the  destructive  "  strength  of 
civilization,  without  its  mercy." 

A  final  word  on  the  fate  of  Sitting  Bull, 
the  gentle,  kindly  lad,  who  made  his  home 
with  us  in  the  lodge.  His  prestige  as  a 
prophet  was  due  to  his  fixed  conviction 
that  sooner  or  later  the  white  man  would 
prove  faithless.  With  his  little  band  of 
followers  he  had  kept  the  open  field  until 
about  seven  years  ago,  when,  worn  with 
battle-toil  and  civil  care,  he  entered,  at  our 
urgent  solicitation,  into  a  treaty  of  perma- 


THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  169 

nent  peace.  He  scrupulously  observed  the 
terms  of  his  compact,  and  no  accusation 
was  ever  brought  against  him,  except  that 
it  was  "believed"  that  he  intended  to  leave 
the  reservation.  It  was  the  first  time  that 
he  had  ever  trusted  us,  and  as  soon  as  we 
had  him  completely  within  our  power,  in 
cold  blood,  we  murdered  him.  That  dark 
deed  was  committed  under  the  auspices  of 
a  detachment  of  troops  from  Fort  Yates, 
who  had  made  a  plot  with  the  "  Indian 
police"  on  the  reservation.  At  a  signal 
from  the  troops  the  police  were  to  raise  a 
disturbance,  and  thus  get  a  pretext  for  the 
butchery.  The  disturbance  failed,  but  the 
murder  went  on.  It  was  at  the  dawn  of  a 
Sabbath  morning  that  the  troops,  after  a 
long  night  march,  approached  his  camp.  A 
cry  was  raised  that  the  Long-Knives  were 
coming ;  the  idea  being  that  he  would  either 
make  a  dash  for  his  horse  or  stand  on 
defence.  He  did  neither.  He  bade  his 

12 


170          ON  THE  "TREACHERY"  OF 

people  be  calm,  telling  them  that  they  were 
in  the  hands  of  the  Great  White  Chief,  and 
that  the  Long-Knives  were  that  chief's 
children.  And  so  they  had  to  stab  him,  as- 
he  stood  in  his  tent,  with  his  head  bowed 
and  his  arms  crossed  upon  his  breast. 

The  deeds  of  Claverhouse  were  disavowed; 
as  were  those  of  Alva,  and  Aleric,  and 
Dalrymple.  We  are  less  squeamish.  The 
Massacre  of  Glencoe  is  still  a  stain  on  the 
government  which  condemned,  yet  did  not 
avenge  it.  We  are  more  practical.  Before 
the  desert  breezes  had  lapped  up  the  blood 
of  this  murdered  chief  we  were  mocking- 
the  "  heathen  moans "  of  his  bereft  kindred,, 
and  rejoicing  in  the  fact  that  our  holy 
religion  had  at  last  acquired  supreme  right 
of  way. 

And  the  Great  White  Chief  (our  late 
worthy  President  Mr.  Benjamin  Harrison) 
congratulated  the  country  on  this  achieve- 
ment, and  assured  us  that  the  Indian 


THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN.  171 

question  was  a  simple  matter  now  that 
Sitting  Bull  had  been  put  out  of  the 
way. 

"  Put  out  of  the  way "  is  a  mild  phrase. 
But,  General  Maury,  you  will  pardon  me 
for  saying  that  it  were  better  that  ten 
thousand  men  should  fall  in  the  ranks  of 
open  battle,  than  that  one  life  should  be 
surreptitiously  taken  by  connivance  of  the 
national  authority. 

My  God! — Is  it  to  this  that  our  vaunted 
civilization  has  brought  us  at  last? — that 
we,  the  children  of  light,  the  heirs  of  all 
the  ages,  should  slay  a  confiding  enemy 
whom  our  truce  had  beguiled,  and  then 
condone  the  crime  by  imputing  to  him  a 
faithlessness  which  was  all  our  own  ! 

Have  we,  indeed,  in  dealing  with  these 
people,  lost  all  sense  of  distinction  between 
military  strategy  and  personal  treachery? 
Shall  we  take  the  sword  of  the  soldier, 
which  appeals  in  God's  sunlight  to  earth 


172          ON  INDIAN  "TREACHERY." 

and  Heaven,  and  barter  it  for  the  stealthy 
dagger  of  the  assassin? 

In  judging  us  as  a  nation,  may  the 
Almighty  cast  aside  His  scales  of  justice, 
lest  He  should  deal  with  us  as  we  have 
dealt  with  our  unhappy  victims. 

These  people,  General  Maury,  were  my 
friends.  They  were  faithful  and  just  to  me, 
and  in  their  behalf,  on  occasion,  I  will,  at 
least,  "unpack  my  heart  with  words." 


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